079 - Desert Child, Mothmen 1966, & Sable - Underplayed

Episode Transcript
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(00:06):
Thank you for pressing start on episode 79 of Underplayed, KZUMS
indie video game podcast. Today we have two secret games,
followed by a review of our featured game, Sable.

(00:28):
Here on Underplayed, we review indie games of all kinds, the
games with small budgets but bighearts, the lesser known
experiences with imaginative ideas.
I'm Bo Po and I'm joined by another.
He got the platinum in going under.
It's one of his numerous claims to fame.
He's the OB to your IB in a cooperative game.

(00:50):
He runs like a pony. He loves pepperoni.
It's the one and only Disco Cola.
What is happening? I'm having a hard time hearing
you through this mask. Hey hold on just a second.
Feeling a little dizzy but I'm fine.
How are you? I'm doing just fine.

(01:11):
My glow worm on a stalactite in a cave.
Those are references to our featured game, Sable, our first
featured game this season where it's just the two of us.
Yeah, talking about a game. Yeah, the old fashioned way.
That's we we have an above average percentage of of guest
episodes this season. We do.
We have an average of 1 every other episode.

(01:33):
And actually that's a good segueinto what I wanted to just
quickly mention. And that's the next episode we
will have another one of those guests.
Hey, it's Haley, our friend and streamer and awesome person will
be joining us to help us one to just tell us about herself and
everything she does talk a little bit about.

(01:53):
Oh, sorry, I have a hair in my mouth.
Leave that. In the episode, Oh Oh, we'll be
talking to her about all of the stuff that she does on Twitch
and elsewhere. We'll be talking a little bit
about indie games, talking shop about games we love.
And then also she's going to help us review Dwarf Romantic,

(02:14):
which will be the featured game of the next episode.
So we're really looking forward to that.
Just wanted to make people awareof that.
We always try to give a heads upin the episode before about an
upcoming guest. And then since it's the second
episode of our season, we are going to do the thing we do
every season, which is where we talk about a few games that
we're looking forward to coming up.

(02:35):
So I think we've each picked 3 this time, less than we've had
before, but nonetheless, super excited to talk about these with
you. Did you want to share about your
first one? I don't know what your list is.
Oh, sure. Oh, I see.
I see you just. Messaged, I sent.
You some? Yeah, I see them now.
Yeah, so the first one I sent you is called Kid Bash Super

(02:57):
Legend, and this is very, very obviously from the character
design taking some inspiration from Mega Man.
But you also, I kind of get the feeling that there's inspiration
from like Mes, like Nintendo Mes.
Yeah, not 100% on that one though, but it just kind of

(03:19):
looks like this more Claymation,Chibby, Mega Man like.
It it also reminds me of like Yoshi's Crafted World, those
kinds of games, Kirby's Epic Yarn, kind of those kinds of
things. It's it's got that sort of art
vibe going on and then it's justlike it looks like Mega Man

(03:40):
crossed between an Ice Climber and has like weapons from
Nintendo Mes. I I'm even in this trailer
seeing some like Mr. Game and watch looking kind of sections
as well. Yeah, there's a there's like a
silhouetted boss that I saw a glimpse of.
There's a pirate boss that you're fighting.
If you don't mind, I'd like to read the game synopsis from the

(04:02):
Steam store. Go for it.
In this nostalgic rogue like action platformer, awaken in a
world of forgotten game characters as a hero with no
memory of his pasts. After failing to save a nearby
village from destruction, can you rise, rebuild, and
rediscover the true meaning of being a hero?
That sounds epic. I I think I added this to my

(04:23):
wish list too, but I don't remember where I saw it.
I might have seen it on blue skyor something.
I saw it in some showcase, but Ican't remember which one.
I couldn't tell you. Nice.
Yeah, we've had a lot of showcases recently.
We had summer game fests not toolong ago, so a lot of our picks
come from that. A lot of my picks actually come
from Steam Next Fests, and the first one I'll share about is

(04:46):
Dispatch. This is something that a lot of
people popped off for when it was shown in some showcase.
I don't remember which one, but this is a superhero workplace
comedy where choices matter. Manage a dysfunctional team of
misfit heroes and strategize whoto send to emergencies around
the city. All wall balancing, office
politics, personal relationships, and your own

(05:07):
quest to become a hero. And this is developed and
published by Ad Hoc Studio. I think it's their first game.
This game is technically indie, but it is stacked with voice
talent from the likes of Aaron Paul, Jeffrey Wright, Laura
Bailey. Jacksepticeye is in this a lot
of Pierce. Lots of other very talented

(05:27):
people voicing this cast. I got to play the demo of this
in Nextfest and this game is so funny disco and it's also so
masterfully animated. I love the animation in this.
This is a game where you're making choices.
Choices definitely matter in this game.
You're managing this team of superheroes that's very like the

(05:51):
Suicide Squad. Like they're kind of washed.
Some of them are washed up, someof them are delinquents.
But you work for this office where your job is to dispatch
the superheroes to solve problems around the city.
And in gameplay, this takes the form of looking at a map, seeing
emergencies pop up, and determining who would be best at

(06:14):
solving these problems given their abilities, their
strengths, and their weaknesses.And so as you send the
superheroes out, you see them develop and get skill points and
improve. So you really want to
strategically pick the right heroes for the right problems.
But problems will overlap and sometimes you wish you could

(06:36):
deploy the same superhero to multiple places and you can't
always do that. But then when you're not doing
that, you're selecting dialogue.And it is very funny.
It's it's vulgar. You might not expect that just
looking at some screenshots, butit is rye.
And it's also being worked on bysome of the people who made the

(07:00):
Telltale Games. So a lot of seasoned
professionals in the narrative gaming world working on this
game too. Wow, Yeah, that looks, that
looks, looks incredible. I remember when I saw that.
It seems like almost duck a yearand a half ago at this point.
It feels like forever ago the first time I saw something about

(07:20):
this. Yeah.
It's supposed to come out in 2025 according to the Steam page
and so no date specifically. And then also for Kid Bash Super
Legend, it says to be announced for release date.
My next one I saw, I think in the same showcase as Kid Bash.
It's the big catch. This just looks like a a fun 3D

(07:43):
platformer, but your main sourceof not only attack but also
mobility is a fishing pole. And you seem to move pretty
fast. And I love the little character
design. He's kind of like a a nebulous
black something or other. Doesn't seem to be any
particular like anthropomorphized kind of animal

(08:04):
or anything, just somebody that has a fishing pole and jumps
really high and goes really fastand I just love the way it
looks. Yeah, this is one of the games I
got to play at packs, and I don't think they have the demo
on Steam yet, and they also don't have a release date
announced. But this is one that I waited in

(08:25):
line for for like half an hour to play and it was worth it.
It was really fun. The demo was basically this big
level that they just let you runaround in.
No objectives that I could tell.Just run around, use your
fishing pole, get some experience trying the mobility
and maybe catch some fish here and there.

(08:46):
But it was fun. I'm looking forward to this as
well. I think the way the character
move kind of reminds me of Crash, but you're moving around
as fast as like Sonic at times and 3D Sonic, not like classic
Sonic but anyways. It does feel that fast and
you're using the fishing pole inways you might not expect, like

(09:07):
grappling to things. You're going vertically, like
really tall distances too. Another one I'm looking forward
to is yet another one I tried inNextfest.
It's called Hell Clock, and thiscomes out pretty eminently.
It's coming out July 22nd, the Steam page says.
Forge powerful builds with endless loot in this relentless

(09:28):
combination of roguelike and ARPG, Blast through dungeons and
unleash inhuman powers in a darkfantasy twist on Brazil's War of
Canutos. So this ended up being my
favorite game of Nexfest. It's the one that I played for
like far and away the most time.I played it for like 7 hours
disco. And this is one of those games

(09:50):
where you go into a run, you're in a dungeon, you're doing like
Diablo style hacking and slashing and looting, and you
get better and better every time.
You do a loop and there is a clock that's winding down.
When the clock reaches 0, your run dies.
There is an option to turn off the clock, but the clock is
really motivating you to make the most of what you're doing.

(10:13):
And you are upgrading your character in so many ways.
There are passive abilities, there are skilled trees.
There's going to be this constellation map in the full
game that I haven't even seen yet.
You have these relics that you hold on to.
You're picking up things every single run and just getting
better and better. And it's just addicting.
It is just like numbers going up.

(10:35):
It's seeing yourself destroy a boss in seconds that on your
first run might have taken you 5minutes and now you just walk up
to him, shoot a few bullets intohim and he's just gone.
This is just my catnip. It's the kind of game I can play
for hours and hours and not feelthe time pass.
So yeah, hell clock. I highly recommend to people who

(10:57):
like action RPGs. It reminds me of a game that I
tried to pick as a secret game for this season.
Spoiler alert, I didn't. It's called Curse of the Dead
Gods. Oh, I've I've heard of that.
I have that sitting on my shelf and I've been looking for an
excuse to play it, but I haven'tfound it yet.
But yeah, this is very much reminding me of that.

(11:18):
Cool. Yeah.
And I just love collecting loot in games and it does the loot
stuff in a super smart way. There.
You pick up a lot of upgrades that only upgrade your character
for that run, but as you pick upbetter stuff it auto equips the
newest best thing. But then you also have
persistent gear that stays with you run to run.

(11:41):
So there's a good amount of resetting your progression and
carrying on your progression that I just think is a balance
I've never quite seen done this well in other games.
Cool, cool. My last one.
This is one that I didn't see ina showcase, but I saw on Blue
Sky at some point. It's called Bombshell Blitz.

(12:02):
I mean, my reasons for wanting to play this are pretty simple.
The character designs drew me inright away and they're these
like low Poly, but also I guess I'm in my chibi phase.
They're like low Poly chibi girls and they look really cool,
but you're just in these like mechs and it's a it's a twin

(12:25):
stick shooter in Mex and your characters are low Poly chibby
people and it just, it looks like pretty mindless fun, I
think. So that's as simple as it gets
for me. Is this like going into matches
with other people? Is it level based?
Do you know? I don't know.
I would assume it's level based.Like yeah, you just pick a

(12:45):
level. But yeah, I truly don't know.
Yeah, this looks super cool. This was not on my radar and it
has no date for the release date, but hopefully sooner
rather than later. My last one is Meo Memories and
Orbits. So this one we learned about in
a showcase. I feel like it was a year, maybe
more than a year ago and then itgot reshown in a showcase or two

(13:09):
recently. But the Steam description says
play as Android Meo in this mesmerizing Metroidvania where
you explore the Vessel, an enormous technological arc
overgrown with machines gone rogue.
Uncover its secrets, enhanced, you know his abilities and save
the spaceship and its residents from oblivion.
And I think this is just one of those games that you and I will

(13:30):
both love. This is like this is really
appealing to your sci-fi like robot interests.
It's really appealing to both ofour interests in Metroidvanias
and just really artful 2.5 D exploration games.
The demo for this is quite impressive in that it lets you

(13:52):
walk around a lot and there is complexity to where you can
walk. It's not quite linear in that
demo. So you do some exploration and
you really get the sense of thatMetroidvania.
Let's figure out where to go andwhat this person is telling me
and where I should go based on that.
But not in a way that's frustrating.
I, I had a lot of fun with this demo and I, I think it's going

(14:14):
to be scratching a little bit ofthe limbo itch, a little bit of
the inside itch, those kinds of things.
But then, but then also, you know, our more traditional
Metroidvania games that we love too.
So yeah, it's, it's super artful, It's beautiful.
I love Mio already and I want it.
It looks great and I want underplayed tagline to be

(14:37):
scratching the inside itch since2022.
Yo, so anyway, yeah, those are the games we're looking forward
to for now and it's a non exhaust.
I can I can pick another one. I had to cut my list but.
Oh, you did? Yeah, sure.
Oh well, if you want to share another one, go ahead.
Well, already close the. Window.

(14:58):
Oh, that's OK, that's OK. Let's we can move on.
I remember it actually it's scratch the cat, but it's it's
well, a lot of the same of like big catch.
Just another cool look in 3D platformer.
I think I might be aware of this.
Scratch the cat. I love that name.
Yeah, we're in a 3D platforming renaissance right now.
Yes, I think this is on my wish list.

(15:20):
This looks super cool. This is like a DJ cat.
Yeah, yeah, a lot of like musical instrumentation designs
to the world and yeah, just looks pretty dope.
Nice. I'm always down for a 3D
platformer. OK, cool.
Well, we're going to move on. But before we do, there are a
few very easy ways to support Underplayed.
They cost nothing. They take almost no time at all,

(15:41):
and we would really appreciate you doing these things for us if
you haven't already. First, give us a follow and a
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Two, you can follow us across social media.
We have links in our show notes for that.
And three, sharing our podcasts by reposting our stuff and

(16:05):
telling your indie game loving friends about us means the
world's. And as always, we love you.
Thank you for listening. It is time for our secret games.
Secret games. Secret games.
I know you're playing without me.
Secret games. Well, I'm here to tell you baby.
Secret games. I've been playing 2 secret

(16:29):
games. We're going to each review an
indie game. We've been playing secretly
since our last episode. I don't know what Disco Cola has
been playing. He doesn't know what I've been
playing, and we're going to reveal right now what we've been
playing and review these games. So we'll start with you, Disco
Cola. Let the mystery be no more.
Reveal your secret game for Episode 79 of Underplayed.

(16:53):
My Secret Game This episode is ajam from Oscar Britain and it's
called Desert Child. Once a dead man, always a dead
man. Once a dead man, always a dead

(17:21):
man, believing that he's an animal he thinks he has right to
kill. 21 of my ways of bed. I can taste it.
Oh yes, you mentioned this. I.
Did I mentioned this in the lastepisode?
So that maybe threw you off? I don't know.
But no, I I figured there was a chance it might be a secret game
going forward, but I didn't wantto assume anything.
What was the what was that firstthing you said?

(17:41):
It's a. It's a jam.
It's a jam. That's what it's called, he
says. It's a jam by Oscar, I think.
Oh, that's the developer. Yeah.
What's the What's the movie director?
I know what you're talking about.
A a joint, yes. Oh, Spike Lee.
It's a Spike Lee joint. Yes, that's I think the.
Kind of. Conspiration here.

(18:03):
So cool. It's a jam by Oscar Britain
called Desert Child and is published by Akupara.
So for those out there that are familiar with the the trailers I
sent Bopo the the one that is the Cowboy Bebop trailer,
essentially, Yeah. So that'll that'll sound.
Immediately reminiscent of of that.
I'm looking at it right now. So I'm going to start with

(18:27):
reading the Steam description, which I don't always do, but you
are a hungry young hover bike racer who needs to get off Earth
before it explodes, hunt bounties, throw races, and do
whatever you can to get to Mars and win the Grand Prix.
So as that says, we're a young hover bike rider.
I don't really remember if we have a name.

(18:48):
If we do, it's mentioned maybe one or two times pretty early
on. When we start, we have little
more than our hoverbike. We might have a little bit of
cash in our pocket. So early on it's up to us to win
as many bike races as possible, to earn enough money to get to
Mars where opportunities are more plentiful.

(19:10):
As we race, our literal hunger in our belly rises and we also
receive damage to our hover bikes.
Unless maybe you're like a perfect racer.
So in between races we have to decide how much of our winnings
to spend on food and how much ofour winnings we spend on
repairing our hoverbike, if at all.

(19:31):
Both our bodies and our hoverbikes.
Being in good condition also improves our race performance.
So early on, you do have to strike that balance there to
decide how much of your money tospend on what.
So would you foremost call this a racing game?
Kind of where my mind's going. Yeah, yeah, I think so.
You could potentially call it anRPG, not in the like JRPG turn

(19:56):
based style sense, but. What game doesn't have?
RPG elements these days, yeah, but you're also.
Shooting a lot of things. Yes, first and foremost, as far
as like input goes, you are doing the most work in the
racing sections. But there is, there's still.
I think you're spending most of your time outside of races, if

(20:17):
that makes sense. That makes sense.
Yeah. It's like when it's interactive,
it's hella interactive. Yeah.
Like you're putting in a lot of inputs.
Yes, I that's a good way, I think to put it.
But anyways, once we get to chapter 2, which is getting to
Mars, a few new elements are introduced, including our
ability to take jobs. So this could include testing an

(20:41):
experimental laser, or hacking Mars Bank, or even hurting
Kangaroos. I'm.
Seeing that in the trailer rightnow.
Yeah, some of these jobs, like hacking the bank are clearly
illegal. So the more illegal jobs you do,
the higher the the notoriety youreceive.

(21:03):
And from what I can tell, what this does in practice is make
you more likely to be stopped bythe police.
I don't know what effect it plays other than that, but you
do get a trophy for getting a certain level of high notoriety,
and I didn't get that trophy yet.
So you're a goody 2 shoes so. Far Well, I wasn't trying to be,
but I got when you get stopped by the cops, if you fail to

(21:25):
escape from them, they take all the money that you have on hand.
So that happened to me twice andI was like, I'm just gonna not
focus on that right now. And then the last thing of note
is that while exploring the streets of Mars, you can
sometimes encounter another parked hover bike and you can

(21:47):
attempt to to steal a bike part from that bike.
And stealing depends on success in a quick mini game.
So if you look at the trailer and you see four different
numbers scrolling through, kind of like a bike lock.
Yes, I did. I did see.
That that will be the the mini game that you're playing to
attempt to steal the bike part. But from there you just you

(22:09):
equip and unequip bike parts onto your hover bike to make
races easier and you can upgradebike parts in certain ways.
And you just do the best you canto earn as much money as you can
to enter the Grand Prix and win the Grand Prix on Mars.
And that is your win condition for the game.
OK so to move on into stuff thatI like about Desert Child, I

(22:31):
bought this game because of the art style.
It's a pixel art game but minimal on colours and usually
I'm not into the pixel art with just this like minimal or no
shading, but I actually found this game to be really
attractive from from start to finish.
Basically in general I think racing feels pretty good.

(22:53):
I love balancing speed, dodging obstacles most of the time and
shooting from my bike and boosting to the finish line and
from side to side. Yeah, just controlling the bike
feels really good throughout therace.
Yeah, you're like moving on the Y axis a lot.
So it's that that perspective. It's like side scrolling.
Yeah, it's side scrolling, but you have a lot of feel to work

(23:16):
with and so you're staying out of the way of the other racer
because they also can shoot at you and slow you down and damage
your bike. But you also want to spend most
of the race ahead of them because you get more points that
way and you want to try and earnas much money drops on the race
as you can. So you're really doing a big

(23:36):
balancing act. All the while, of course,
dodging obstacles that are a part of the race track, which
can be agonizing at times it looks.
Chaotic. It can get chaotic depending on
the race track especially. I do like that we have to keep
track of hunger and bike damage.It adds character and purpose to

(23:57):
walking the streets, which wouldotherwise just be much more
tedious. If you don't have to keep track
of your hunger. It's like, well, I only have
like 9% hunger, so I'm not goingto go to the ramen shop.
I'm going to go eat some beans in the market or my bike's only
a little bit damaged. I'm not going to take it to the
good repair mechanic. I'm going to take it to the

(24:19):
alcoholic with his belly hangingout.
It's going to charge me a littlebit less.
It does seem like the in betweenrace parts or how this game
becomes like really dynamic withjust player choice.
Yeah, I really like that. Yeah, I like that this game
feels gritty without being in your face the way that I think a

(24:40):
sludge world might be. I like sludge life.
Sludge life. Sorry.
Yeah. So this is a probably a little
bit more on my level than than sludge life as far as like
grittiness and like. It's kind of, it seems, tongue
in cheek. Yeah, a little bit.
Yeah, a little bit. I like the way that most of the
map is connected in circular in Chapter 2 in a way that wasn't

(25:00):
immediately clear to me. But once I did figure it out,
everything felt within reach. If I wanted to get from the good
bike repair shop to the bridge over the docks, you know, that
felt accessible because everything was interconnected in
a way so I could I could take different routes to get to

(25:22):
different places. So maybe if I wanted to buy a
record on the way, I could take this secondary route and go
around and, and get to the to the bridge at the end.
And then Speaking of records, easily, and much to my surprise,
my supremely favorite thing about this game is the music.

(25:42):
Most of the music here is like licensed tracks and they all
rule as well as all of the original music in the game.
It's amazing. There's even one of the records,
or in this case, it's a cassettetape that you can buy, is a Joe
Rogan parody podcast that you can add to your track rotation.

(26:03):
And it's hilarious. I'll also note that there's a
musical track on here that features the same philosopher
that we heard in the game. Everything.
Really. OK, I OK, so I have the trailer
in my ear ball and I can kind ofhear that.
And that's that guy. Wow.
Yeah, that's. Incredible.
When I, when I first heard that,I was like, I wonder if that's

(26:24):
that guy. And I was streaming at the time
too. So I like, I googled it and I
was like everything philosopher and it, it was like, sure
enough, it was the same guy. So I don't know that one
influenced the other, but it wasjust like, oh, that's heck yeah.
You're slowly playing the game ography of this guy's
appearances and I'm here for. It yeah, but yeah, at the end of

(26:48):
the season I'm going to have a really hard time picking between
the music in this and voice acting and slay the Princess for
favorite sales game. Oh my gosh, yeah.
And we're only two episodes. I know.
Yeah, this music is really good.I there's.
A A darling will have to be killed.
I'm going to pull up. I I.
Yes, for sure. It A darling will be slain.

(27:09):
Slain. No.
There's one song A. Darling will be dessert.
It's, I don't know, a desert. Good try.
Yeah, there's this one and Mega Ran works on it and it's called
Love is here. It's it's from Mega Ran Bag of
tricks, a Luna and Jared the Alien.

(27:30):
And this is like. That's one of the original
soundtrack. This is one of the license
tracks. Yeah, but it's incredible.
I've been listening to it so much since I played this game.
I'm going to move on to stuff that I didn't like so much.
I did say for the most part, youknow, having the map

(27:51):
interconnected on Mars is prettynice, but I don't really like
walking around the streets of Mars.
Your character does move really slow and sometimes getting from
the good bike repair shop to thebridge on the docks, that's
still a pretty good distance. So if I had like I could do like

(28:11):
a just a brief 3 second jog, youknow, like how some people do
when they're like, I'm kind of running late for something and
they just do a quick little savelike 2 1/2 seconds.
Yeah, that's actually a pet peeve of mine because I look at
that and I go like, what are youactually doing?
Just saving 2 1/2 seconds. I guess but.
OK, but think of it in terms of walking around the streets of

(28:33):
Mars and Desert Child. Maybe that will help.
You sure? Yeah.
No, it helps me visualize for sure.
But any it's, it's a pretty Dangslow walk.
I wish I could just move a little bit faster.
And of course, if you have high notoriety, you don't want to
look like you're running away from something, but it's it's
just a little slow. Certain racing tracks really,

(28:54):
really suck. And I'm thinking specifically of
the one that is over water and has like waves as an obstacle
because it has waves, but it also has the drones that are
shooting at you that every racetrack has.
And it also has rocks that are sticking out everywhere.
It looks like it has rained. Yeah, it's it's, it's my least

(29:15):
favorite race track and I don't actually know that it is
specifically harder than any of the other ones, but it slowed me
down the most. And then my biggest complaint,
but it's a pretty big complaint,is that most everything is given
to you without any specific directions.
In general, this can be kind of like a good and enriching thing,

(29:35):
especially in modern gaming. But I'm, I'm thinking
specifically like some of the jobs you take, the game doesn't
even tell you what the win or loss condition is.
And I'm going to bring it up again.
Hacking the bank doesn't give you any instructions.
And it's kind of to the point where like Googling it yields

(29:57):
the result. How do you hack the bank and
many of the sources offering? I don't really know.
But it seems like if you have more money in your own bank, you
earn more. But again, I don't really
understand it. So like that's kind of what you
get when you Google it and. No one.
No one knows. Right.
And it's, it's more than just this one, but I, I did have to
Google how to do many of these different like special jobs just

(30:21):
to see how to do them. And when it's when the ones that
do have answers say this is how you do it.
I'm like, how would I have knownthat?
How would I have gathered that after, you know, failing 3 or 4
times even? Anyways, Desert Child was a game
that didn't really capture me right away.
But once I made it to Mars, and by that I mean once I was able

(30:45):
to expand my soundtrack, I really started to fall in love.
Balancing jobs for hire with notoriety and racing is actually
pretty fun. It's pretty cool to look at, and
the music is absolutely incredible.
The greatest drawback in what was otherwise a very enjoyable
experience is the very strong lack of literal directions in

(31:06):
some of these special jobs. As such, I placed this as an 8
point O out of 10. Awesome.
Well, I've wanted to play this for a while.
It's actually in my backlog because like we said recently on
our show, this game frequently goes on sale.
So I did pick it up one time andI think I have it on
PlayStation. So yeah, you're 2 for two with

(31:28):
having secret games that I just really want to play.
I, I don't know if this will topthe last one, but it's up there.
It's up there. So I I want to catch up with
this. I, I think you would, I think
you would like it to a point, but I I still think Mon cage is
definitely more of a boat poke. Yeah, I think I'm super excited
for that. I did buy Mon Cage in the Steam
Summer sale. Hey, there you go.

(31:49):
So you're ready, first step, I've got the first step done.
It was like 30% off is all. But I mean, it was like.
It's a pretty cheap game to start.
Not bad. Yeah, it's not bad.
So is Desert Child really two chapters where it's just pre
Mars and then Mars? So it's pre Mars and then Mars
and then Chapter 3 is the Grand Prix, which does play a little

(32:11):
bit differently, but it's a Chapter 2 is where you're
spending most of your time I would say.
Is it the way you were saying like pre Mars and and then being
on Mars it almost felt like justmusic wise it was reminding me
of like an A side and AB side toa record.
Or something. That's a good way to think of
it. Yeah.
Yeah, the Grand Prix, honestly, I won't say that I could have

(32:32):
like lived without it in the game necessarily, because you do
need a conclusion, but like as far as what it adds to the game
doesn't even match like parts 1 and 2, specifically Part 2.
Gotcha. So and then when you finish a
race, is that race done and you can only move on from there or
can you replay? Or is there like an arcade mode

(32:55):
where you can just jump in and do races wherever you want?
You can just do races whenever you want, no entry fee and all.
It's it's literally a way for you to grind away at money
basically. OK, so there is a real.
It's so most players will probably end up doing.
That, yeah. And I will note here that when
you do select to do just a standard race, there is a two

(33:16):
player option. Wow.
So I don't know what that looks like in practice, but I would
imagine it's just instead of probably not 2 of you against an
NPCI, imagine the second player takes control of that NPC.
Oh OK, got it. Yeah or you're like both
controlling 1 speeder bike. Like you move I shoot or

(33:39):
something which Octodad rules. It's randomizing who has what
job every race. But yeah, for the most part,
standard races have no fanfare. Your racer that you're racing
against has no name. It's just, it's just grinding
money. Got it.
Cool. Well, where can you play Desert
Child? So Desert child can be played on

(34:02):
Linux, PC, Mac, PS4 which is where I played it, Xbox One and
Nintendo Switch. Swedes, we are going to move on
to My secret Game. My Secret game is also a game
that grabbed me because of its visuals and then I sort of
discovered what it's about. My secret game is called Mothman

(34:23):
1966. I haven't heard of this one.

(34:49):
I don't think this is one of my better known secret games, but.
Mothman 1966 is a 2022 interactive fiction game
developed by LCB game studio andpublished by chorus worldwide.
The game synopsis from Steam says quote Mothman 1966 is a
pixel pulp, a visual novel fusing exceptional writing and

(35:12):
stunning illustration in inspired by mid 20th century
Pulp Fiction and 80s home computer graphics set amongst
the strange occurrences of the Leonid meteor shower of 1966.
End Quote. So this game feels like a comic
book. It feels like a classic text
adventure meets a comic book meets you know like a pulpy 80s

(35:34):
adventure. And this is a text based
narrative adventure with still pictures that will show up
alongside the text. And the art is pixel based.
There is a very strong emphasis on blue and green colors in the
color palette. You'll see that along with like
white and black, but blue and green is informing the look.
And that's really what drew my eye to this is how it looks.

(35:57):
And there are also touches of red, I'll say, to accentuate
things. I'm, I'm counting here, looking
pixel by pixel here and it I'm, it seems like there's less than
eight colors going on. It might even be less than 6.
Yeah, it is super minimal and it's very focused on what
colors. It's amusing.
And I think the blue and greens particularly, they really add to
this like paranormal feeling. That selection is, I think,

(36:20):
intentional. And this takes place, as you can
tell, in 1966 during the this meteor shower that takes place
every 33 years. And along with this meteor
shower, strange phenomena start happening.
The story focuses on 4 main characters, three of which you
control throughout the game. There's Lee and Victoria, they

(36:44):
are history students who are in a relationship, and they're
seeing the meteor shower on a date.
There's Holt, a gas station owner.
And then there's Lou, the paranormal researcher and
writer, who starts investigatingwhat's going on.
And these winged beasts start appearing and attacking people.
And the entire story takes placeover one night as the characters

(37:07):
try to figure out what's going on and how to survive.
This is a ulit fiction story with many fantastical elements.
At lay. There are backstories informing
the characters and their intentions, and you slowly
unravel those. And being a text adventure,
you're reading the story, but you're also making dialogue
choices when characters can choose what to say.

(37:28):
You also make choices about whatcharacters might do in a given
situation, and if you make the wrong choice, sometimes
characters could die, resulting in a restarts of that scenario.
And there are other nonviolent interactions you'll see in the
trailer. You might see like a modified
version of solitaire. You might see someone

(37:48):
rearranging things on shelves. And some of those instances have
a connection to the story as well.
And the game takes place over 10chapters.
The whole thing amounts to abouttwo hours of story and gameplay.
So each chapter is pretty Dang short.
Some of them are just a few minutes long.
And each chapter is from the perspective of one of the

(38:10):
characters. So you might be playing as Lee 1
chapter, then you'll play as Holtz, and then you'll play as
Victoria in another chapter. So it changes all the time.
And this is the first of a series of adventure games from
LCB Game Studio called the PixelPulp series.
So you can play these other games called Varney Lake and
Bonson Nights. And all three of these games

(38:32):
share some kind of a connection.I don't know if it's a universe,
I don't know if it's subtle hints from one game to the next.
I haven't played the other two, but I do want to play the other
two soon so that I can kind of understand what's going on.
And then also LCB Game Studio released Grizzly Man this year

(38:53):
or last year is I think it's another pixel pull.
December of 2024. OK.
So late last year. Thank you for looking that up.
So Grizzly Man is I think their fourth game in this style.
So and every game has a different story with different
characters, but Mothman 1966 is the first one.
I was actually going to play Bonson Knights for this episode

(39:15):
and I started looking into it more and I was seeing more about
how Bonson Knights is the third pixel pulp game.
And I'm like, maybe I don't wantto play them out of order.
Maybe I want to start with the first one chronologically.
So that's why I'm going with Mothman.
And what I really liked about this game was the style.
The Moody illustration really catches your eye.
I think this is visually arresting pixel work.

(39:38):
I it's there are shots in this game where you'll see someone
looking at something. You'll see maybe a surprise will
happen. And the way the characters are
illustrated is just very expressive.
There's strong moments of tension.
I think a lot of that comes out in the style of the visuals.
The story weaves together a pretty layered yarn that I liked

(40:00):
uncovering. So characters have those
backstories, they have secrets that you learn, they have
motivations. This also works in a paranormal
sense where this pulpy story haslike paranormal things going on
and there are many layers to it.It's not just there are these
creatures flying around. There's there's a lot more
actually. And some of it doesn't make

(40:22):
sense, but I don't think it needs to make sense.
You know, it's like one of thoseone of those kinds of stories
where I'm OK if like the why or the how isn't explained.
It's really just what is going on.
For instance, like there are these men in black suits that
show up and say mysterious things.
There's this idea of this is going to be a just a slight

(40:44):
spoiler, but I'm not saying how it happens or you know who it
happens to, but there's this idea of intra familial
possession. I'll just leave at that.
There are references to the Civil War, the American Civil
War as well. So you might look at all these
ideas and you might think, how does that all weave together?
It all happens within the span of two hours somehow, and it all

(41:08):
really works. I think this is really well
written. The characters are written with
panache. Each one is distinct.
I also really liked the achievement lists.
There's an achievement for collecting all the deaths.
So like our instinct is to not die, but there's actually on
PlayStation, for instance, there's a trophy for just

(41:28):
finding all seven ways you can die.
I think that's that's like houseand it's like why you play the
game House. And sometimes you make a choice
not knowing that that's going tolead to a death.
Sometimes you definitely can tell, like maybe you're running
from something and someone tellsyou to go left and you you
select right, you're going to die, you know?
So I like that it's sort of telegraphs things, but also

(41:51):
leaves things mysterious. And then also like making
certain dialogue choices will give you an achievement too.
And that's really fun. And then when I get to dislikes,
I would say that when this game gets interactive, when it's time
for you to not just make dialogue choices where you're
scrolling through a list, but when you're actually given a

(42:13):
little puzzle to do, those moments are a little tedious to
control. You need to select all these
text prompts to narrow down whatyou want to do.
I'll give you an example of this.
There's a puzzle where you need to rotate squares in a grid.
It's a grid of like 3 by 3 squares and you have to select

(42:35):
which row you want to look at, and then you have to select
which column you want to look at.
And then you have to select rotate left or right.
You can't just move a cursor over to the piece and press
different buttons to rotate it. You're always using these text
prompts to select what you do. It's really dedicated to the
style. In that sense, it is to a fault.

(42:56):
Maybe maybe to a fault. That's a great way to put it.
I I think it's really committed to the throwback style, which I
super respect. But it's sometimes as a side
effects leads to these moments where you're just, you're doing
lots of inputs to achieve what you want to do, which could in a
more modern way be achieved withjust one or two button presses.
Sometimes you're doing like 6 or7.

(43:18):
So it takes a while and then choices don't seem to be too
impactful in this game to me. Deaths results in this immediate
retry screen with no repercussions.
So if I mess up, if I don't get a good sense of how to handle a
situation and a character dies, it's not like the story keeps
going. I'm forced to just retry or

(43:40):
quit. And so this idea of choose your
own adventure, which is one of the Steam tags, is not really
playing out in that way. It's really just like, oh, you,
you messed up the story. We got to get the story back on
track. So there's just not as much
depth there as you might think. And then the soundscape is
pretty bare. There's not a lot of music in

(44:01):
the game. There is a chapter early on that
uses music to great effect, but then I didn't hear music after
that really. There are some moments where
there's some like cliffhangers at the ends of chapters and
there's a really dramatic piece of music that will play as the
scene fades out, and I love thatfeeling.
But otherwise you're mostly justlistening to this text scrolling

(44:25):
sound that gets repetitive. So I think there were just more
opportunities to use music or use sound effects, use cues to
give the chapters some flair. But overall, Mothman 1966 was an
entertaining and short sit. It sort of feels like narrative
junk foods in the best way. It's written really well.

(44:47):
It's not my favorite game to control, but I'm excited to see
how it connects to the other pixel pulp games.
And I'm going to give this a 7 out of 10.
Perfect. It's playable on PC, Mac,
Switch, PS4 which is the versionI played, PS-5, Xbox One and
Xbox Series. So it's a super short, pretty
straightforward game. Not a lot to say.

(45:09):
One of those secret games of mine.
Yeah, I don't know that I have alot of questions really.
The one point that I was a little bit curious about, you
sort of answers like, you know, we're more focused on just
getting the story back on track rather than a lot of branching
paths because like you, you havea lot of choices in the game,
but it's not leading to like an Until Dawn, you know, series of

(45:34):
outcomes. I was hoping for Until Dawn a
little bit more. OK, Yeah, I.
That's not to not to reference non indie games.
Too often, yeah. But yeah, But yeah, we've played
lots of games like this where wemake a choice and no matter what
happens, we keep on. We keep on keeping on with this
story that we've now maybe made unique to our selves that no one

(45:56):
else will quite see this way. It's not quite that deep, and I
think I'm fine with that. If I go into the other games
knowing that that's the case, I'm there to absorb the writing
and the vibes. That's mainly what I'm going
into these for now. Cool.
Well, I think this game came outat at a good time for a game
like this to come out because it's it, it has the chance to

(46:21):
catch some of those like Stranger Things sort of vibes
and and get people interested inan older style of, of game that
would potentially be featured inStranger Things.
Yes, this is appealing to that crowd.
This is like your Stranger Things fans, your fear St. fans
might get something out of this.And then you have the anthology
sort of storytelling too, so you've got like American Horror

(46:44):
Story too. Yes, yeah.
So I'm going to, I don't know ifI will pick Varney Lake and
Bondsen Nights as secret games. We'll see.
But I'll try to play them somewhat soon and then maybe
report back. So those are our secret games,
Desert Child and Mothman 1966. Let's move on to our review of
Sable. It is our featured game.

(47:17):
Sable is a 2021 open world exploration game.
It was developed by Shedworks and published by Raw Fury.
The game synopsis from the Steamstorefront reads.
Quote Embark on a unique and unforgettable Whoa, embark on a
you. Oh, it says Ann unique.
That's throwing me off. Interesting.

(47:38):
That's that was copied from the Steam.
Yeah, Ann, Ann Unique. Quote Embark on an unique and
unforgettable journey. I'm keeping all this in by the
way. OK, good.
Embark on an unique and unforgettable journey and guide
Sable through her gliding, a rite of passage that will take

(48:01):
her across vast deserts and mesmerizing landscapes, capped
by the remains of spaceships andancient wonders.
This game takes place on Midden,a mostly desert planet which is

(48:21):
split into several regions. We play as Sable, a member of
the nomadic Ibex tribe. And as Sable comes of age, she
must partake in a solo ritual called the Gliding, where she
has to leave her tribe temporarily to see the world,
help its inhabitants and gain masks.
And masks are a big part of how people associate in this place.

(48:44):
And it was something that Disco used in his intro at the top of
the episode very cleverly. Thank you.
Yeah. You see a lot of masks in this
game. When Sable has helped enough
people with a certain category of tasks, she will obtain a mask
for maybe a faction, or maybe for like a kind of profession or
a cause. And after a certain number of

(49:06):
tasks are completed in this game, you can choose to end your
gliding and return home to your camp.
And the goal of the game is to explore the world, interact with
many people, solve puzzles and learn more about the lore of the
planets. Perfect.
And then as far as controls, Sable can do quite a lot.

(49:26):
So this is, you could call it a platform.
No, not really. It's an exploration game.
There's no like floating platforms, right per SE.
You're jumping, you can climb you.
Can jump. You can climb.
Climbing runs on a stamina meteras well as your Sprint.
You have access to a short little Sprint.

(49:46):
Your stamina meter can be increased through completing
certain activities. You gain access to gliding and
this is going to play a big partin your traversal as well as
jumping and climbing. By holding down your glide
button, you just slowly fall to the ground in whatever direction
you decide to move. You can choose to turn it off

(50:10):
and on, you know, intermittentlyas you fall, and in effect looks
a lot like a bubble as you're falling.
You gain access to a hover bike pretty early on, and you can
ride your hover bike around the planet and traverse all of these
areas in any order that you wishto.

(50:30):
There's no true barrier to accessing one specific area as
far as I recall. Yeah, I think you can just go to
any of the seven regions from the jump.
Once you're done with the intro area, like it's called the Ewer,
or just Ewer is the name of yourregion that the Ibex tribe is
in. Once you're done with some

(50:51):
introductory sort of tutorial missions, the whole world opens
up and I think you can just go anywhere.
Yeah, as soon as you hear the song Glider.
That's right, the world is. That's your key as soon as you
see the title card, actually. Yeah, you can use this a little
bit less, but you can grab objects.
Certain objects are interactableand you can grab them.
You can also throw them with a very pithy tiny little, just

(51:15):
like a can can basically. Like about as far as I could
throw. Drop it with a small arc.
Is is more like it. You can place markers on your
map. You can do this in the over
world if you choose to. I believe it's like L1L1 on a
PlayStation controller. You get this like little reticle

(51:37):
Sable's like looking at her device in her hand and she's
like looking out in the distanceand sort of like dropping this
reticle down like a pin on a map.
And it's really cool. But you can also do it from the
map screen by like looking at your map and like zooming in and
and scrolling over to where you want a place.
I might be interested in traveling here and have access
to like 13 markers at any given time I believe.

(52:01):
And for people's reference, not to mention yet another AAA game
this episode, but the newer Zelda games, the open world ones
like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, they let
you do a lot of the things that Disco's describing.
So like the stamina, the climbing, the gliding, the map
markers, the actual in world placing a map marker.

(52:22):
That stuff happens in the new Zelda games and I think this
game came out in 2021. I think there's a chance.
When did Breath of the Wild is wild?
Before that, but not like a ton.It was 2017, the Breath of the
Wild came out, and I think there's a good chance this game
took inspiration from some of these things.
Because I played 50 hours of Breath of the Wild, I played 120

(52:46):
hours of Tears of the Kingdom. And as I was playing Sable this
past few weeks, I was like, OK, yeah, this is giving those
games. And I think it's probably taking
things from other open world games too.
But that's a really quick way toexplain.
Like these are the mechanics going on.
It's some things you you see in some popular games I think.
What I think those two games specifically are something that

(53:09):
many of our listeners have played and I I haven't, so I
appreciate the the reference there.
And then something else Sable can do is you can change your
clothes, so you'll be able to buy different garb from
different storefronts or just people in general.
And they'll you'll be able to sort of like match the clothes

(53:29):
of other tribes or other sort ofprofessions.
You can change your mask as you earn masks, which again is the
key point of the game is to finddifferent masks and collect by
performing tasks that coincide with those masks.
And you can also customize your bike with different bike parts.

(53:51):
And you can also find different color palettes throughout the
world, whether that's purchasingthem from storefronts or finding
them in the wild. There's treasure chests too,
that will give you scrap metal or just some what's the what's
the name of the currency in this?
Cuts, cuts. You'll be able to find cuts.
I love that. I love that name for currency.

(54:13):
That's all I wrote down. I'm probably missing something,
but I, I tried to like literallysit down with my controller in
my hand was like, OK, I can do this, this, this and this with
this button. So I was like I I made a list
based on that. A lot of what I was doing was
constantly going into my quest journal.
You know, I was going in there seeing what I have activated.
You pick up quests every time you go into an encampment in a

(54:35):
new region. Someone needs help.
A lot of quests have to do with fetching things.
You might have to go fetch like 3 beetles that are a very
specific species and they'll tell you where to go.
Right, Yeah, I would say that this pause screen in Sable
reminds me a lot of the pause screen in Haven.
Oh yes. But more effective.

(54:57):
Yes, I agree. I agree wholeheartedly.
You can access all your different items, you can change
your clothes in there. And yeah, the quest log is the
is the really big one because you can highlight a different
quest that you want to focus on and that'll change the markers
on the map if there are markers to be had sometimes.
There aren't. Sometimes there aren't.
Maybe that will be. Maybe that will be mentioned by

(55:19):
both of us later. Amazing.
Well, so when it comes to history and significance, I
don't know that there's a lot tosay here.
I do know that Sable was one of the monthly PlayStation Plus
games. That's what put it on some
people's radars. It was nominated for best Debut
Indie Game at The Game Awards 2021.

(55:39):
It got other nominations for theGolden Joystick Awards and the
DICE Awards. But yeah, this is a game that
I've just heard a lot of people talk about and it has appealed
to us for a long time. I think particularly you.
You were the you were the one who picked this for this season.
I've been looking forward to Sable for a super long time.

(56:02):
It just, if you just look at Sable herself, there's a lot of
like Hyperlite Drifter vibes just by looking at her.
So it was like, I've I've been signed on for a long time and
then found out that the music was done by Japanese Breakfast
and I was like, oh, I remember Bopo bringing that in during
wearing our old radio show. Yeah, our radio show days.

(56:23):
Yeah, I used to. Play them and looked into the
music and like that song was just like yes, so as I've got
like hyper light drifter lady and cool desert hover bike and
freaking Japanese breakfast likesign me up.
Yeah, it was a great combinationand going into this I didn't
really know what it looked like.I knew it was an open world

(56:44):
game. That's about it.
I didn't even know that there wasn't combat right.
I expected combat and I also didn't expect it to be quite so
open world like I I kind of expected a little bit more
barrier, yeah. Just to be a little bit more.
Linear path. It is both open-ended in terms
of where you can go and just open world in that the world is

(57:08):
big, like it's large. It's there's a lot of square
footage in this game and now disco after playing it, what are
your overarching thoughts? Yeah.
So overall, Sable was a game that I've been looking forward
to for a long time, like I said,and didn't meet my expectations,

(57:29):
but not necessarily in the way that I think the game was bad,
just that I didn't necessarily know what the game was going to
be. And so that surprised me, but I
did come away with something new.
It this this game is is now on the list of games that changed
my DNA. Wow.

(57:49):
And it's maybe not like the mostprofound change, but it's an
important change and I'll get tothat.
OK. But overall, I loved the look of
the world. And I don't necessarily mean
like the art style. I do think that this like cel
shaded art style is good. I just think the clothes and the
gliders and the buildings and the machines, they all have cool

(58:10):
and interesting designs. And even like some of the mask
designs are like never in a million years scribbling on, you
know, some scratch paper, what I've ever designed something
that looked like. That and I'm not convinced not
even half of them are like practical in their design, but
they look really cool and very distinct.
Most of them I think would be like, how can you?

(58:33):
What are you alive under there like?
Well, I we kind of mentioned this, but everybody in this
world wears a mask. Yeah, no one has a face.
You don't see any human faces, Idon't think.
I mean, you see like the big like statue faces.
Those are human like, but you'retalking to people wearing masks

(58:54):
and so that stuff needs to be really detailed and also diverse
because you're talking to so many different factions.
Yeah. And eventually, I think once I
saw people with the climbing mask, it was like, whoa, whoa.
You know, that's when the diversity of masks really struck
me, 'cause like before that you're looking at ones that have
kind of like traditional Earth tribal sort of design elements,

(59:20):
like the just the circular eyes or like a skull kind of mouth or
like an animal skull kind of mouth kind of thing, or horns.
But once I saw that climbing mask, I was like, Oh my, things
get weird and like the cartographer.
Cartographers mask is wild. Like you almost think you're
talking to a different species at first.
Absolutely. I do like that every area of the

(59:42):
game has those like one or two things in common, Speaking of
the cartographer. But it also like totally has its
own identity visually. So if you think it's like
Cornifer and Hollow Night, there's always like a Cornifer
somewhere, there's always a cartographer.
But at the same time, reaching the cartographer requires you to
traverse. Obstacles that are specific to

(01:00:04):
that area. Yeah, you might be climbing on a
skeleton, a big skeleton of a big creature.
You might just be floating to a bunch of big rocks jutting up
out of the ground. You'll climb up to this like
rotating circle of who knows what, an interesting machinery
that seems to float. Just really cool stuff.

(01:00:25):
I like the marker system on the map.
This is one of my favorite map marker systems.
And I don't just mean like the markers that you put down, but
one of the things that I've seencomplaints about in games is
complaints about waypoints. And that's something that I'd
never personally understood. And I'm like, please give me a
waypoint. Like I love waypoints.

(01:00:45):
I want to know exactly where I'mso the.
Complaint you hear is that thereare waypoints.
Yeah, there was like a period oftime where people would complain
about a game giving you a waypoint because it was like,
stop holding my hand was like, no, I want to enjoy the game and
still get in the right directionwithout getting, you know, too
far off track in this huge world.
And then also in a lot of open world games, I feel like if you

(01:01:08):
don't like the waypoint, just don't look at it.
Yeah, too right. So I don't understand that, but
OK. But anyways, like when you're
when you have your quest selected, it basically gives you
a waypoint. And I just, I think this is
great. I love it and it's the way it's
handled is nice because even if you don't like the waypoint, you

(01:01:30):
specifically can turn it off andjust not hit your L1 button to
see where you're going. But I, I love it.
I think it's. Great.
I think it is necessary. Yeah, it's very necessary.
Sorry. And then Speaking of, I like the
quest list in this pause menu, having all of your quests in one
spot, but choosing which one youreally want to focus on to stay

(01:01:50):
oriented in the right direction.I think that's a great way to
keep on top of your tasks. And it became super helpful.
I found myself also where I was in a spot was like, OK, I
finished that one quest for thatone person, but there in the
area that looked like this and Ineed to get to that area.
So which area was that again? So many times I would be able to

(01:02:13):
even use completed quests in my list be like oh right OK because
I got this quest from this placeand I need to go back there
because there's still stuff I haven't done there before.
That's smart. I didn't do that.
I needed it because I was like all over the place in this game.
The quests are very good at giving you contextual
information about maybe you needto go talk to three different

(01:02:34):
people. After you talk to those three
people, their little subtask line gets crossed out or faded
out or whatever, but you can seewhat you learned from each
person. It's specifically calling out
what that each of those three people gave to you.
So that that helped me in cases where I was like, OK, I
delivered these beetles to that station.
I don't remember what station that was, but there was a lot of

(01:02:56):
stuff I didn't do there. So it's like I need to go back
there. And I did use my completed
quests to figure that out. Speaking of areas and and maps,
I do think the quick travel system is greatly appreciated,
even if I did forget that it wasthere for 2/3 of my playthrough.
My gosh, really? Yeah.
I was using that constantly. I was driving everywhere.

(01:03:18):
You were mad driving. You're driving yourself mad.
Yes Sir, but it's also a helpfulway to reset your hover bike in
Sable. You can like whistle for your
hoverbike. Sometimes it won't come to you
for. Or get stuck.
It gets stuck or just won't showup for whatever reason.

(01:03:38):
But if you quick travel to some place that'll just like reset
your. Hoverbike, that is very nice.
So sometimes I would quick travel to one place and then
quick travel back to where I wasand I'll just be like, OK, now I
have my bike. I love that.
At least on PlayStation five, itmakes use of controller
vibration rumble to help you find chum eggs, and this is one

(01:03:59):
of those. I noticed this.
Yeah, I did notice the rumble features.
I noticed the haptics going on, especially when running on the
sand and stuff. I thought that felt amazing.
But tell me how the chum eggs work.
So as you get in proximity to a chum egg, your controller
vibrates and chum eggs are collectible in this game and
you'll you'll get a slight vibration in your controller as
you're in proximity to. Notice that I probably did feel

(01:04:22):
it, I just didn't register that as being because of that
collectible. It took me a little while to
notice it, but once I did noticeit I was like how did I even?
I love that I never because thattask seemed overwhelming in such
a big world. I was like how am I ever going
to find all these chum eggs? And spoiler, I didn't find all
of them yet. I haven't tried that hard.

(01:04:43):
How many of you found you know? I'm between the 60 and 80 mark.
Oh, OK, you found more than I have.
I've found like 47 and I know that my next task is to find 60
total or there's a trophy for getting 60, right?
So that's really all I care about, but I do know that there
are at least 160 total in the game.

(01:05:06):
Hold on, let me because I searched this up one night.
How many chum eggs in sable? According to fandom, this says
165 across the map. So trophy hunters only need to
get a fraction of them if they just want the trophy.
Well, I think then. But then there's you.

(01:05:28):
Well, you get, you also get a chum mask, which doesn't happen
at 60. So you're going to need more
than 60, I believe, if you want to like, because there's a a
trophy I think for getting the mask.
Too. Oh, there is.
I think so. OK, I thought that was for just
getting to 60. OK, then I'm in it.
I'm. In.
It we're in this. I don't know if you have to get

(01:05:49):
all 165. I cannot believe that that's.
I'll try to look into this as you keep going.
So anyways, the vibrations for the chum eggs are really
helpful. However, at the same time, and
this is not even going to register as a true complaint,
but there are a lot of other things that cause vibration in
your controller. So if you're talking about the

(01:06:12):
place with the lightning where your controller is almost
constantly vibrating, if there'schum eggs around there, forget
about it. I'm going to have to like use my
eyes but. To obtain the chum mask and
sable, you need to collect 100 chum eggs 1. 100 That seems much
more manageable, but still kind of.

(01:06:35):
I'm not even halfway. Yeah, I'm going to have to pull
up a map like I did with the infamous, the Blast shirts and
Infamous. I infamously had to give up on
getting that platinum for like 13 years.
Yep, because I couldn't find oneblast Shard and I just.
Gave up. I'm going to be in the same
boat. And then?
Years later I did get the platinum, I started a new save

(01:06:57):
and I found all the like 400. A new save at that point.
Yeah, I I was convinced that my previous save was glitched or
something. Anyways, still in the like
section Despite that detour intomisery.
Yeah, sorry. I did love finding and climbing
the crashed ships. That was a great joy in the

(01:07:18):
game. Probably my favorite.
Not necessarily because it was like the puzzle platformer
section of the game, but just, Idon't know, it gave me a context
to the world that that felt different, that felt foreign.
It felt alien, and it was like acool little detour into
something different. Yeah, like you're discovering
something that no one else in this world will discover because

(01:07:42):
you're a scavenger, you're an explorer, you're on this
mission, and it just feels special.
It feels super special finding those.
That being said, some of the puzzle platforming that did
happen in there was pretty cool,but that's that's not what I
fell in love with. And then I mentioned this at the
top. This game gave me a really

(01:08:02):
important, life changing perspective.
So growing up, you have a lot ofpeople that you grow up with, a
lot of peers. They'll be like, oh, I can't
wait to get out of here. Or, you know, this place is a
small town. It's just like, I need to go out
and see the world. I need to go find my purpose.
I need to go find myself or whatever.
And for me, until just like lastweek, that was a perspective

(01:08:27):
that I was just like, I never really understood that.
I was just like, I never understood why it was like such
this like driving force, like why people couldn't find
happiness where they were right.But Sable made me realize that I
was very lucky to always know what my purpose was.

(01:08:49):
From a very young age. I always knew that like I was
going to be a dad, like I wantedto be a dad.
That was going to be my thing. And because I knew that I was
always able to find like happiness where I was like my,
my purpose came from the companyI was with.
It didn't matter. Like going out and seeing the

(01:09:09):
world didn't matter to me. Going out and finding myself
didn't have any meaning because I already knew what I wanted.
And I realized that not everybody has that.
Because when I got to the point in Sable where it said you can
return home now and and choose your mask, I was like, I'm

(01:09:30):
nowhere near ready to do that. Not because I wanted to complete
the game, but because I still wanted to see the world.
There was still so much I hadn'tseen yet.
And like I knew the parts up to that point that I had enjoyed
the most, and that was climbing and exploring the ships.

(01:09:51):
And what I expected to like the most was Beatles because I love
Bugs so much. And it wasn't even close.
And I was like, I'm not ready togo home.
I'm not ready to to put on what I'm going to wear for the rest
of my life. Like I still need to go find
myself as Sable. They do make it feel like a huge

(01:10:11):
decision, but also a decision that doesn't give me a lot of
pressure because it's up to me. I get to choose when I go back,
and at a certain point I did go back just because the amount of
effort to go searching for more factions and quests and things
was maybe greater than my desireto just see the credits and just

(01:10:33):
know that I finished the game. But then I did go back and I
kept exploring. That's beautiful.
That sounds like you got something out of this that told
you a lot about yourself and also about other people like it.
Like you're, you understand why people have said that in a way
that's not maybe as blunt as howyou've heard it so many times in
your life. Like I need to get away.

(01:10:53):
You know, I want to get out of here.
There's there's a deeper meaningto that.
For a lot of people and so I, I do get it now and I'm like, I do
still think that people can findhappiness where they are.
And I do still think that like the company of people is going
to make the biggest difference in your life as opposed to like

(01:11:14):
a geographical location probably.
But anyways, it brought that perspective to me that I didn't
have and struggled for more than30 years to like really get the
point of. But I do get it now.
And like what you said, there are a couple of those masks that
I'm just like, eventually I'll do this only for completion

(01:11:36):
because I'm not interested in it.
I'm not interested in what it means, and the effort it takes
to acquire it is work. Yeah, and but.
There's some stuff that I don't even know how to do yet, but I'm
just aware that it's in the gamebecause of the trophy lists,
right? So like, I don't know where the
fishing is. Oh yeah, I don't enjoy the I
don't enjoy the fishing at all. I haven't even done this, but I.

(01:11:58):
Haven't even done that yet. Yeah, it's like stuff with the
guard. I'm like, I've done some of
that, but it, I didn't enjoy it.And it, you know, once I got to
the point where it was like, OK,I enjoyed exploring the
shipwrecks the most. That's my mask.
And that's when I was like, I need to, I need to get credits.
I'm still going to go back and do more stuff.

(01:12:18):
I was like, I need to get credits.
And I at least have the exploration mask for the ships.
And so I was like, OK, I'll go home and then I'll go back later
and do this other stuff. But so yeah, life changing
perspective. It's not.
I really like that. It it wasn't, you know, like it
didn't change me the same way ghost song or like Portal 2 did,
but. But like adna change, big or

(01:12:43):
small is worth noting. I agree and this is maybe one of
the smaller ones, but I'm glad you saw that in the game.
That's that's actually like a surprise of mine that you had
such a profound take away. Yeah, that's cool.
I didn't expect it dislikes to flip the coin on such a profound
moment. This game has a lot of graphical

(01:13:05):
glitches. Maybe it's just in the
PlayStation version, but I will say that I did start it briefly
on PC and I was playing it and Iwas like, it runs on my
computer, but it doesn't run well.
And then I moved to PlayStation.I was like, Oh no, this is just
how it runs. This is just how the game is

(01:13:25):
built. What I've heard is that it's
pretty unstable at a certain point on all platforms, OK.
And this is going to be something maybe we expound on a
little bit more later, but it tends to get laggier the longer
you play. And I think PS 5 might be among
the worst performing because Shed works prioritized making

(01:13:47):
the PC versions and the Xbox versions better.
And I think all of them across the board when the game shipped
were worse. And I think they fixed things
across the board and relative tothe other ones, PS 5 is now like
maybe one of the worst ones because they can't dedicate the
time and the resources to fixingit, or so a forum post that I

(01:14:10):
saw said. OK, so there you go.
We'll expound more, but and to coincide with that, there were
also a lot of difficulties with camera, especially in like
confined spots, especially considering one of those
confined spots is the spot whereyou get new masks from the mask
maker person thing. That's that's a bit unfortunate

(01:14:35):
to have camera not know what to do in such an important spot,
right? And it's like a cutscene, so it
feels like it. Could almost just be a.
Well, at a certain point it doeshave to switch back.
Yeah. So when you're in there and
you're exploring the dialogue, the camera is just kind of like
trying to get in there, you know, like a family stuck in a

(01:14:56):
car. But then it does get to a more
pre rendered section so there isno camera necessarily.
I had that camera swiveling thing trying.
To find a spot in more than justthe mask maker Yeah, it's it's
all over the place, but that's like the most.
Like egregious spot in my mind there.
So I I mentioned that you can customize your hoverbike, but

(01:15:19):
the scaling in which certain types of hoverbike parts are
just objectively far and away better than others sort of
limits what I'm allowed to do asfar as truly customizing my
bike. It's like, yeah, I want the
beetle stuff because I think beetles look cool and I know I'm
not going to pick the Beetle mask at the end of the game, but

(01:15:42):
the Beetle bike parts are kind of rubbish compared to like the
lightning crystal stuff that I get later on.
It's just not even close. So it's like everybody's kind of
forced to if, if only. Yeah, if only you could spend.
Some cuts to upgrade right? If you could scale everything so
that if. You want to look a certain way,

(01:16:02):
you can still travel as fast as these other parts.
I didn't think about that, but that's something we do see in
lots of. Games like this, like you can
start with a starting set that'snot that good, but you can kind
of just live with it. You can upkeep it, manage it,
throw money at it until it at least holds up somewhat.
Well, yeah. And this world's like, too big.

(01:16:23):
And there's just like at a. Certain point it's like, I'm
sorry, beetle parts, but I it this is taking me too long.
And so I had to switch to like the lightning crystal parts,
which look cool. They're they're pretty solid,
but I only did it because it wasmoving faster.
And so that was a bit of a disappointment.
I don't really get to look the way I want in all aspects of the

(01:16:46):
game. The scale of the world was
massive and I I was not expecting that.
But, and this, I'm going to throw this back to an early
season 1 episode when we talked about Outer Wilds and Outer
Wilds, you mentioned that the spots that have less detail are,

(01:17:09):
are not spots that you need to worry about exploring in Sable.
The world's pretty detailed all throughout.
Like you can look at a pillar ofrock and find a chum egg on top
and you can drive your bike for a mile or two away and you're
not close to anything that you were before, not close to any

(01:17:30):
landmarks. But that pillar of rock that you
just got to looks exactly the same as you want to eat the one
you found a chum egg on. So it's like it's kind of
looking homogeneous and there's enough spread out.
That you feel like, OK, there's stuff I can stumble across, but
also is there enough for all of this space that there is in the

(01:17:51):
world to justify that? Yeah.
And it's just like, I don't even.
I'm pretty. Sure that it's, you know,
confined to the landmarks, like stuff to explore, but it's just
like, you never know, like maybethere's a color palette on this
Cliff face for some reason. And I yeah the the scale does
add. A huge gravity to when you make

(01:18:13):
a big climb. There are, there are times in
this game where you're super high up and the vistas are
incredible and you get the sensethat like anywhere you see, you
could maybe go to again, like you said, I'm not sure where the
boundaries are, but I think thatis a positive side effect is
that the world just looks impressive the higher you go.
But you're not always doing that.
You're sometimes on the bike, right?

(01:18:34):
Just trying to get from point A to point B.
And it's a long way. Yeah.
And I just I don't know which areas are worth.
Exploring and which ones are just a really attractive set
dressing. Yeah, fair.
So. And then some quests don't have
the waypointing when it would beobjectively super useful.
Yeah. And it doesn't follow the rules

(01:18:55):
of like other quests that. Do have the waypoints right like
it? It just seems like this one
should have this one should haveone.
It's like you have to try to find this person at.
Three different spots. Just waypoint those spots.
Where is the way of the Archer? I don't know.
Yeah, I have no idea. It's not marked on the map.
There's some things I had to. Look up online for quests,
that's going to be one of them Ithink.
I did find the. Way of the Archer, but I still

(01:19:17):
like. Didn't finish that part of it,
but anyways, fishing. I hate the fishing in this game.
I think it's cool that there arefish living in sand.
Like that's kind of neat, That is cool, but I just don't enjoy
it. I haven't.
Done it yet? So I have that to look forward
to. Cool.
The the thing that really like was the nail in the.

(01:19:37):
Coffin for me on fishing was just I would sometimes you would
be able to cast your line and then it would hit the sand, but
then that would be it. It would be done and then other
times you would hit the button when something hooks you know is
on the hook and then it would just be done.
You wouldn't get the fishing mini game.
It would just OK done. OK, so super UN enjoyable

(01:20:00):
experience in my opinion. OK, well I will give it a shot
too at some. Point, because I do want to see
the areas of the game that I haven't seen yet and I don't
even know where you get the fishing because I've been every
place. I just is it a side quest?
It's so there's a, there's a small.
Boat. I guess like a sand boat in one

(01:20:20):
of the earlier areas. Oh, maybe I OK, maybe I have not
been to every place. Yeah.
You just have to talk to him andthen he'll give.
You a fishing pole anyways, trapit up.
I had a certain expectation for what sable was going to be, and
I was off by quite a bit. That being said, for a majority
of the time I did feel significantly overwhelmed by the

(01:20:43):
scale of the world. However, when it came time to
return home and end my gliding, I found myself wanting to stay
out, and not just for completion, but because I
actually did want to experience more of that world, and that's
something I haven't felt my own life.
So this game expounded my perception to include a
perspective that I was aware of but never really understood.

(01:21:05):
However, the scale of the world never ceased to be overwhelming
even in that state, and graphical and camera glitches
remain distracting. Though I'm extremely grateful
for the life changing perspective, I do still have to
give Sable an 8.5 out of 10. Nice.
I'm glad it was overall a positive experience.
And I think it's full of surprises just about what this

(01:21:27):
game is about. I, again, I didn't really go in
having too many expectations other than we're going to be in
an open world in the desert. That's really all I knew.
And what I ended up really liking is how this game looks.
I love the clothing and the architecture, the how the
environments look, the technology, the colors, how all

(01:21:49):
that stuff intersects is super cool.
You'll be exploring in this gameand the sky will change color
and it will just be gorgeous. The colors are amazing, I love
the low frame rate movements. And I'm not talking about the
performance stuff that Disco wasmentioning.
I just mean it's intentionally animated that way.
It is intentionally animated like there are.

(01:22:10):
Just fewer frames. To your movement, and what that
adds for me is an understated feeling, like a subdued feeling
to how you move. And I think that carries across
to the temperament of this game.I think this game is sort of a
quiet game. There's conflict in it.
There are people who have problems that they need help

(01:22:33):
with, but this is not unlike something like Mutazione, you
know, like where there is conflict, but the way that we're
approaching it is just a very understated, subdued, quiet
fashion. And I find myself more and more
super attracted to those kinds of games.
If anybody listening knows aboutmore games like Sable or

(01:22:55):
Mutazione in terms of personality, I would love those
suggestions. It's something at a certain
point that I can't describe. It's something I feel, and it's
something you just kind of have to play to feel.
So I love that this that feelingis in this game.
There's the fact that you can end the game when you want at a
certain point, and that choice feels personally really

(01:23:18):
meaningful to me. I've said this time and time
again, but I love those choices that allow us to express
ourselves. I love the music by Japanese
breakfasts. I it's incredible.
I've added so many of these songs to my streaming playlists
when I'm like on a BRB or something.
It's now, it's now in the mix. A lot of these sort of like new

(01:23:39):
age tribal songs, even the songsthat are just instrumentals are
incredible. You don't even need to know that
they're by Japanese breakfasts. You know, I, I was kind of
worried that like, is the music going to feel special?
Because I know it's Japanese breakfast and a lot of these
songs I would never be able to tell and it's still amazing.
So it passed that test. There's the, I love this

(01:24:03):
intersection between sci-fi and abandoned structures and desert
tribes. That can be a hard thing to pull
off. It can kind of feel like a
mishmash. It can feel clumsy and other
works of fiction. But you know, it's like they're
mixing digital with analog in the desert.
I love it. I've got so many converter
cables going through. Under the sand, yes, a lot of

(01:24:26):
purchases online. To find the right the right
chords and everything. I also really like that this
game doesn't rely on combat. It is a pure exploration
experience. I do love combat in games, but I
love this game just leans into exploration and helping people.
I do have dislikes as well. The performance issues are chief

(01:24:49):
among them. I just.
I honestly think it is shocking that this game performs the way
that it does. I am shocked.
I am like kind of appalled actually at how much the game
lags. It doesn't really announce
itself for me. At first when I'm in the intro
area, it was performing pretty fine.

(01:25:10):
It was the longer I played. And then when I started going
outside, you were into the like the other regions.
That's when it started happening.
And I'm like, oh, OK. And it eventually gets to the
point where if I'm playing for afew hours, the the frame rate
will drop so much that I'll be frozen on screen for like one or

(01:25:30):
two solid seconds while I'm on my bike.
And I have no sense about like where I'm going at.
At a certain point, it's really hard to focus on the game.
It's really hard to put that aside.
There were other issues I had, like when I would try to quit
the game while it was doing the quitting action, the game would

(01:25:51):
crash. I had two crashes.
Time for it to happen. I know because.
That's when you're game. Saving.
And after my second lay session I lost two hours of progress.
No, and I think it's because. I was quitting.
The game I had saved I had quit to menu.
I was then quitting the A on PlayStation 5 and it was.

(01:26:16):
It had this progress bar of liketrying to quit the app and
usually it's instant. For any other game I've ever
played on my PlayStation it happens instantly.
I've had issues before but with this game it just sat.
There, thinking about quitting. The app and I was like Oh no and
then eventually after like 2 minutes I got this crash error
and I think it failed to save myprogress or something.

(01:26:39):
I, I reloaded my save a couple days later and I was like, oh,
this quest is active that I finished.
I don't have this outfit that I bought.
I had like two more masks than this.
There's a quest in my journal that I don't see that I had last
time. And so I was really upset by
that. And we've had buggy games, We've

(01:27:01):
had laggy games before. I am shocked that this is a
featured game, a game I've hearda lot about that a lot of people
have raved about that. Is this problematic with
performance? Yeah, that's a bitter taste.
I'm so sorry. Yeah, it's.
I I was just like if. Those problems were not in the
game. I would my I'm going to have a

(01:27:21):
score for this game, and you might be surprised at what it is
actually after I've been talkingabout it, but my score would be
probably dramatically different if not for these performance
issues. Yeah, I mean that mine.
Didn't quite get anywhere near as bad as yours.
For me it was like backgrounds in the far distance would like

(01:27:43):
flicker in and out. Yeah, there's draw distance
stuff. I'm not even mentioning the
stuff that I. Can forgive somewhat easily or
relatively easily. Like there's that stuff too.
I could just keep going about some things here, but I'm really
focusing on like these are the major things.
But beyond that, I would say that swimming is really slow.

(01:28:03):
I don't like swimming in this game.
Climbing, you know, it's interesting.
Climbing rock faces doesn't feelslow to me.
But when I'm on a ladder and I'mclimbing, it feels really slow.
But I feel like they're the samespeed.
It is the same speed. There's this expectation I have
in. Games where?
When? I'm on the on a ladder, I want
it to be fast and that's just not in this game.

(01:28:24):
So I just wish some of these activities, these movement
activities were faster. Riding the bike can feel front
heavy. I can feel also like floaty.
And if you go off of a even justa little jump, you can sometimes
fly way high up in the air. It just feels a little chaotic.
Then there's stuff with how the story is told and how dialogue

(01:28:45):
sometimes happens. We're reading all the dialogue
in this game and we're often told what characters are
thinking and feeling without being shown what they're
thinking and feeling. It's the style that this game is
written in where Sable will say like, I tell him that I'm angry.
And it's like, why are why are you not just saying that in the
way that dialogue normally happens?

(01:29:06):
And then the other character will have dialogue that I'm
reading or I'll go up to a character that I've had
interactions with before. And the text on screen is
literally we have a nice conversation and then it says
exit. And it's like, why did I what?
There should be more there, so. It's.
Telling us things without showing us things.

(01:29:27):
I don't know how else to explainit.
The world, like you said, can feel quite big, and it can have
a little bit of an empty feelingwhile you're on the bike just
trying to get somewhere. I'm not sure it needs to be this
big. I also point out that quest
don't show up on the map sometimes, like they don't have
quest markers. And then I wish the regions were

(01:29:49):
marked on the map characters time and time again.
Will remind you about names likethe Wash and Badlands and Hakoa.
Like these names that I can kindof narrow down by crossing off
others in the lists, but I just wish on the map put those names

(01:30:10):
on there. It's I don't see the big deal in
not having that. Yeah, that was a that was a
complaint I had in Ghost Song too.
Which is persists to today trying to complete it.
OK, so it it those little things.
Can add up, but overall here's what I'll say.
Sable is Hanford by performance issues and some tedium, but

(01:30:31):
Despite that, it's filled with thoughtful bits of story that
add up to what feel like a breathing world.
It is a gorgeous game, visually and auditorily.
I really vibe with the personality of this game.
I actually want to play more of it tonight.
I am looking forward to it and Iwas playing it this morning.

(01:30:52):
I was finishing up all the ship sections for a score.
I'm going to land on an 8 out of10.
Way higher than I expected. What did you expect after?
What I said, I expected. A7 OK, so.
On paper, it sounds like. Maybe my score should be lower,
but that's really, I think this is a game where the lows are

(01:31:13):
quite low, but the highs are also super high for me.
So that that can sometimes make it hard to narrow down on a
score. So, so there's there's a world
where Sable performs. Better.
And you liked this way more thanI did.
Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah.
And I don't know if there's. Anything else about technical
flaws we need to share? But I just wish with the success

(01:31:36):
the games had, I wish there wereresources to commit to fixing
it, making it a little bit better, especially on PS-5.
And that's the version both of us played, we just want to point
out. So if you have the convenience
listener of playing Sable on multiple platforms, you might

(01:31:57):
want to prioritize an Xbox version or the PC version.
It might work better than PS-5 just for your awareness.
But let's turn to our favorite parts of exploring the world.
I have some areas and then also just activities that I really
love doing. You've mentioned exploring the
ships. Those are our puzzle sections.

(01:32:17):
I that's one of mine, too. I was, that's what I was doing
this morning. I love that the puzzles are just
like the right amount of difficulty.
Yeah, I agree. And I just, I think they look
cool. And it's, now that I think about
it, like those stand out the most as you're traveling this
desert planet. It's like, oh, look, technology,

(01:32:39):
I can go there. Yeah.
And once you do 1 like you. Said that's a formula that
announces itself and that shows up in the other regions.
So, you know, oh, every region'sgoing to have one of these big
ships, and they're easy to find.Yeah.
And on your map they have an icon too that's identifiable.
And then I'm thinking about still like.
Giant plateaus and clip faces, but if you can see that they

(01:33:03):
have something built onto them, that's where climbing really
came in for me too, 'cause I waslike, I'm thinking of one in
particular, which I assume is where the Way of the Archer is
up in the north, east, northern and northeast section.
Yeah, the sodic waste. Yeah, which was the?
Last part of the game I explored.

(01:33:24):
At all Same. Yeah.
And I got up there and there's this like massive, like wide
series of plateaus and platforms.
I was like, I'm going to climb up as high as I can, and then
I'm going to look down and see where all of the different
important spots in this big series of Cliff faces are.

(01:33:46):
And that's, that's where I like,really loved climbing.
It was like, I get to look down and then find all my
collectibles. And it's worth the effort to do
that. Yeah, that's I had a similar
moment in the Badlands. That the Badlands was my version
of that, I think, yeah, where you're just climbing and
climbing and you get to these plateaus looking way over these

(01:34:07):
canyons and you can just glide to all of them.
And you don't quite get to the top of the next one, but you
will have enough stamina to thenclimb up to the top.
And the scale there was super impressive.
And that's just where I was really taking in the scale of
the world and seeing the vistas and it.

(01:34:28):
I think when you're super high up in this in this world, that's
when it's super impressive. I also really liked getting to
those cartographers balloons. There were one or two that were
extra puzzly that maybe I was approaching it from the wrong
direction, but then I found the right way.
But yeah, those are satisfying because they let you buy the map

(01:34:50):
to that region and then it uncovers on your map.
There were there were a lot of like I think in.
One case, a cartographer Section2, where it's like we want you
to do this kind of like jumping puzzle sort of a thing where it
was like, I'm going to go collect some chum eggs and get a
lot more stamina and I'm just going to brute force climbing
instead. And so I would do that

(01:35:12):
sometimes. Now another section that I want.
To mention is Acria, and this isthe city that has like a night
market area and it has lots of quests, lots of characters, lots
of like nooks and crannies. I spent a lot of time here.
Did you? I wanted to but I was so
disoriented I couldn't figure. Out like which part of the city

(01:35:36):
had this thing and which part ofthe city had this thing?
And so I was kind of like a a mini version of being
overwhelmed by the scale of the world.
I was like, I got to get out of here.
OK. Yeah, that's that's like a
civilized like. Civilization version of being
overwhelmed. I that's validating because I
felt the same way. I would run around that place
multiple times, just not taking it in and not understanding how

(01:35:59):
the different sections connectedto each other.
Yeah. And like 'cause there's like a
hide and seek. Quest in there right That
stressed me out. I was.
It took me a long. Time I was 'cause.
I was like, I was going all the heck over the place.
So was I like a couple times over and I I just like I can't
even find the easy one quote, you know, air quotes.

(01:36:20):
It's like, I don't even know like how well these kids are
supposed to be hiding exactly. Like are they hiding in a pot
because they're just? Their heads sticking out.
So like it. I spent a long time like I
don't, I don't even know. What kind of, you know, hidden
space I should be looking for? So stressful dude I got that
quest of three kids want to havehide and.
Seek and I said hell no, I'm andI went elsewhere.

(01:36:43):
I was like I'll do that later. I did not have the energy at
that time, but this city also has the quest where you can
investigate the theft of a powercore that leads to power like
electricity essentially being lost for the whole town.
And I thought that was super interesting because it was a
little more open-ended. It basically tasks you with

(01:37:05):
investigate and find clues and talk to people.
And so it's open-ended. It's not telling you who to go
talk to. You have to use context clues.
And you can kind of figure out amotive.
You can figure out who's the onewho did it.
But then there's also like this moral thing, this moral choice
you can make because there are consequences to if you point out

(01:37:27):
a certain person. And I chose not to point out a
certain person because I wanted to protect them even like, So
that was an instance where the game was like really making me
think about the consequences, the moral choice, what was the
truth? And it was kind of hard to
figure it all out. So that one went by a little

(01:37:49):
bit. Fast for me, and when I picked
somebody, I didn't necessarily know that that's what I was
picking at the time. So at the same time I want to
push back maybe a little bit andthen maybe there aren't
necessarily consequences, at least not that I noticed.
Cuz if you talk to that same person again, you get all the
same dialogue options again, thesame options that I did the

(01:38:10):
first time. Talk to him again.
So yeah, I was afraid of. I ended up accusing the person
that I didn't like, not the person that I thought would get
like, locked away, that I don't want to get locked away.
And I thought I did some research on this just to make
sure. I thought it said that the
person would, like, disappear. Interesting.
So I didn't want to do that. Yeah.

(01:38:30):
So I accidentally. Selected that person.
But I didn't even know where they.
Were in the world in the. 1st place because you hadn't talked
to them yet because I couldn't find them.
Got it. OK, I had.
Talked to them I. Think I maybe talked to them one
time but. Gotcha.
Well, that's like an instance where I.
Thought that quest didn't resemble really anything else

(01:38:53):
and another one that happened like that where it's different
was also an Ecoria and it was the shade of Ecoria quest where
we have to find this like hiddenmask and then like there's a
cutscene that happens with this quest that was wild, crazy, mad
crazy. I yelled dude.
I was like what is happening? I have a twitch clip of this

(01:39:16):
actually where I'm reacting to it.
It was just I was like what? What did this game just become
for like 10 seconds and then it acts as if nothing happens?
Yeah, that was like the first mask that I got.
I was. Like, is this what it's always
going to be like? Yeah, I don't know, Maybe, yeah.
Acria is super interesting, lotsof I'm sure there are things in

(01:39:37):
there I haven't even seen yet. I'm I'm interested in exploring
I'm. More interested in exploring the
whale. Is that what it's called?
Yeah, I've barely gone there. I've only been in there a little
bit. So.
That's that's the. Big Acria sized place I'm more
interested in. And that brings us to the next
topic, which is what we still might want.
To do in Sable, I think I want to explore the whale as well.

(01:40:01):
Is there anything else you want to do?
You want to get all the glow worms?
All 165? I have done nothing with you.
Do you mean the chum eggs? The chum eggs.
Sorry. Yes, sorry, I don't.
Know that I want to get all of them.
I do want to get the chum mask. That might be the end of it.
We'll see. There you go.
I haven't done anything with glow worms, actually, so I know
that there's still like bug stuff that I haven't done.

(01:40:21):
You haven't done anything with glow worms.
I had a quest where I had to go.Get glow worms out of a cave.
So you didn't do that? Nope, I don't think I've even
triggered that quest to exist. Oh my gosh, so.
Glow worms are how I bought everything in the game.
Oh yeah. So you get a quest to go to the
glow worm cave, and it's kind ofweird getting in there.

(01:40:44):
I won't tell you how to get in there, but once you find glow
worms, you can pick up tons of them and they sell for 30 cuts.
Wow, that's big. Yeah.
And so. Once you collect enough.
You can basically just it doesn't matter how much
something costs. You can then sell glow worms to
offset the cost of things. Interesting.
And so you can buy out a merchant's entire stock and then

(01:41:07):
have them buy glow worms from you and then they don't have any
cuts left. So I I want to ask.
Because one of the things I wantto do is go to everybody and buy
all the like bike parts and all the clothes and all the stuff.
Because like, I'm not even closeto that.
That's why I was using the completed quests to be like, I
know I didn't buy stuff here andhere and here.

(01:41:30):
Who do you go to to like sell all the stuff?
Because most of the people I've talked to recently in my like
beginning of trying to buy everything ran out of cuts, like
right away. I'm just like, I have all these
like butterflies and stuff, but you don't have any cuts to like
buy my crap. I think what you do is you go to
the merchants. That still are selling things

(01:41:52):
and when you buy their stuff, they have more cuts now.
So you sell your butterflies andyour glow worms to them, right.
I'm kind of in a spot at the moment where.
The things I want to buy cost more than I have, so I can't.
I think that's why there are chests in the.
World like the the pots that youopen that give you 20 cuts.

(01:42:13):
I think you have to maybe find more of those unfortunately.
Sorry. Yeah, that's yeah, I'm kind.
Of I'm kind of stuck. In a we're like, we're both
broke, but I we want each other's crap kind of a thing.
Yeah, that sucks. I I haven't run into that issue
myself. But if you can find just one
merchant that's selling something for like 75 cuts, like

(01:42:33):
whatever amount that you have, then you could, I don't know,
maybe make that work. It's an interesting mechanic for
a game to have like I've. Never had a game where it was
like you can sell your stuff to a merchant but they can actually
like run out of money and then they won't replenish after a
certain amount of end game days.You're sure?
I don't know. They could be that after a

(01:42:53):
certain number of end. Game Days.
It comes back, but I can't verify, but that's another point
is that this game does have a day night system.
There's some interesting stuff going on with that, Is there?
I didn't notice anything that really mattered.
Have you been to the broken bridge in the?
Badlands robably. I've been to a lot of bridges.

(01:43:16):
That are broken. OK, it's marked on the map as
like. If there's a quest that asks you
to go there. OK, so this is.
Yeah, I know which one you're talking.
About and when you glide across there's.
Actually a puzzle with a big oneof those big faces that cuts in
half and opens and there's a hints to it and it says like
when the shadow of the two swords cross, then stand face to

(01:43:38):
face and it will open. Did you see that?
Yes, I thought that has to do with the day night cycle.
I thought it was telling me. That I needed to go get more.
Of the like guard pins or whatever badges, the guard
badges that that's something that's dependent on the day,
night. Cycle where you it has to be
like 8:00 AM and you stand on the platform looking at it and

(01:44:01):
so every hour of end game time is 1 minutes.
So if it's 9:00 AM, you have to wait like 23 minutes.
But then also those rings that you can zoom through to activate
the structures that you get the,I forget what they're called.
You find six of those and you bring them to a mysterious
shrine. Once you do that, there's a

(01:44:23):
machinist or something who needsin game time to pass before you
can finish that quest. And I'm waiting for him to have
had enough time to research. So I will talk to him.
He says I'm not ready yet. And I go do more things.
Then I come back and he's like, I'm still not ready.
So yeah, it does play a role. OK here and there.

(01:44:44):
All right, I want I at one pointI.
Specifically stopped. I'm like, what's the point of
this? Why is this in the game?
Yeah. And it's like, I like that.
It's not a. Super obtrusive thing.
I like that it's just popping uphere and there and it gives us
the nice excuse of having day shift into night and it's kept

(01:45:05):
track of like, you know, what time of day it is.
So anything else about Sable youwanted to share?
I don't think so. OK, well.
I'm glad we both. Played this, I'm glad you picked
it. It was even though it was your
like really passionate pick for the season.
I was also really looking forward to it and I'm glad we
both got a lot out of Sable. That is our review of the game.

(01:45:26):
You can play it on PCPS 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series.
Disco Cola rated it an 8.5. I rated it an 8.
That's the end of this episode of Underplayed.
You can find more of our episodes at kzum.org/underplayed
and on common podcast platforms like Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Our music was composed by Jack Rodenberg.

(01:45:46):
Our art comes from Oni Mochi. Check out our show notes where
you can find and follow us across social media.
Underplayed is on Blue Sky, Instagram and Threads.
You can find my links down belowand I stream a variety of indie
games on Twitch and I am at Disco Cola in many of those.
Places and you can find me very occasionally on twitch, where I

(01:46:08):
now played a variety pack of games and I love it.
I I love that that I that concept.
So I might stick with that for for most of my streams.
I love that. That's such a cool branding
thing. That you're doing.
Next time, we'll have two more secret games to review, A
discussion with our friend Hey, It's Haley, and our featured
game will be Dorf Romantic, a strategy puzzle game developed

(01:46:31):
by Tukana Interactive. Until then, everyone keep on
playing.

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079 - Desert Child, Mothmen 1966, & Sable

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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;}079 - Desert Child, Mothmen 1966, & Sable