081 - Iris and the Giant, Assemble With Care, & Rogue Legacy - Underplayed

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
Thank you for pressing start on episode 81 of Underplayed,
Kzum's indie video game podcasts.
Today we have two secret games, followed by a review of our
featured game Rogue Legacy. Here on Underplayed, we review

(00:29):
indie games of all kinds, the games with small budgets but big
hearts, the lesser known experiences with imaginative
ideas. I'm Bo Po 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. He runs like a pony.
He loves pepperoni. It's the one and only Disco

(00:53):
Cola. What's going on?
It's great to be here with you. SER Bopo, son of Queen Denise,
the determined spell sword, grandson of Lady Leona the
divine Arch mage, and great grandson of Etor the gallant
Hokage. Did you message someone in my

(01:14):
family? Indirectly I thought, you know
you can get a lot of informationfrom Googling people and somehow
your family has that on lock, soI had to employ some help.
Did you go to ancestry.com and log in as me?
I'm doing just fine. My big flaming ball with the
same name as a Spanish conquistador.

(01:37):
Those are references to our featured game, Rogue Legacy,
which is one of our oldest featured games of the season.
It might be the oldest featured game of the season.
I'd have to double check, but this game came out all the way
back in 2013, twelve years ago. Can you believe that?
It's just wild. I, you know, I can.

(01:57):
Honestly, I thought it was a bitolder.
Oh, and yes, it seems like by far this is our oldest one.
The next closest one might be Moonlighter.
Oh, Moonlighter. Yeah, Which?
Is not that old really. Yeah.
So it's good to go back and pickup a classic and play it.
And in my case, I'm replaying itfor this episode.

(02:18):
I played it all the way back in December 2013.
Wow actually on Steam and I've replayed it on PlayStation 4 so.
Yeah, that it was pretty high onyour list before, before this
episode. I'm curious to see where it
where it sits later. Disco after replaying the game
will shift in the ranking. OK.

(02:40):
So yes, it was previously one ofmy favorite game, I think in the
top 10 on my top 100 indie gameslist.
And now that I've replayed it, Ihave some new thoughts on it.
A lot of the thoughts remain, but we'll get to that later.
And then also we want to talk about next episode a little bit.
Next episode, episode 82, we were going to have a very

(03:03):
special guest. We're going to have Kara from
Patch Magazine, which is a monthly Zine devoted to indie
games. Kara's going to come on the
show, talk to us about her gaming tastes, talk to us about
Patch Magazine, and we're also going to review Blue Prince
alongside Kara, which is super exciting.
That's the game that was picked from our lists of options, and

(03:26):
we are both in the middle of playing Blueprints as well.
I have been playing the past like week really feverishly
trying to discover stuff, and I'm looking forward to that so
much. So we like to let you know about
the special guest appearances the episode before they happen,
so stay tuned for that. Also, another item of business

(03:49):
is that we've been doing some collaborations and some
appearances here and there. Just wanted to give people the
preview that I will be appearingon another gaming podcast called
Tales from the Backlog, which ishosted by Dave Jackson.
Every episode he has a differentguest on and he and the guest
tackle a game from the backlog and then talk about it.

(04:12):
And the game that he and I are going to be talking about in a
September episode is Pseudo Regalia, which you and I have
talked about a little bit. And I got to play that about a
month or so ago. We recorded the episode early
and it is sitting in his back pocket.
It's going to release in late September.
So that means that I probably won't pick Pseudo Regalia as a

(04:37):
secret game on our show, at least anytime soon.
I really think you should play this game.
OK. So a little bit more inside
baseball. That was one of our options that
we were looking at when we were on no small games together,
right? And we ultimately went with
Haven, but I did play pseudo Regalia for a little bit to test

(04:58):
it out and see. And I I enjoyed what I played of
it. I still want to play on a
different platform if that ever becomes a possibility, but I
don't know that that will be thecase.
So I do, I do want to play it. It seems like a really fun game.
I'm actually kind of surprised it hasn't shown up on any new
platforms. I wouldn't lose all hope for

(05:19):
that, but I hope it happens so that's it's more accessible to
even more people. I I really had a great time
talking about it with Dave and we both spoilers.
We both enjoyed it, but a lot ofit was so unlike what I
expected. I actually didn't have many
exectations going in. I just knew what the cover photo
looked like. I kind of knew what the

(05:39):
character we play as looks like,and I knew generally that it was
like a platform in 3D Metroidvania, but I knew nothing
else about like the look, the style, the feel of the game.
So that's coming up. I'll probably talk about that
again when that episode is closer.
And then also we want to talk about some recent news that

(05:59):
concerns public media and KZ Wham, which is where we produce
this podcast. There's been a lot of a lot of
news disco that you and I have been looking out for and
reacting to. So what?
What's going on in the world? So if you follow us on our
social media platforms, we're onseveral of them, including Blue

(06:22):
Sky, to a certain extent, Twitter, even Facebook and
Instagram and Threads. You probably saw our statement.
But essentially what happened was a few weeks back, as of this
recording, the United States Legislature passed a rescission
package that takes back two years of funding from the

(06:42):
Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
And again, KSUM is a public broadcasting entity, so
nonprofit, and some of our support does come from the CPB.
As a result, KZM will no longer have that funding.
And despite what Senator Schmidtof Missouri would suggest, among
many other false assertions, this will affect the smallest

(07:06):
stations the most, even though the target of this is PBS and
NPR. Those entities are going to
survive. They're going to be fine.
Most of their support comes fromlisteners.
And it's like less than 2% comesfrom the CPB.
Those, those entities are going to survive.
This is going to hurt small and especially rural stations
significantly. Senator Schmidt suggests that,

(07:30):
you know, they will have access to other funding sources in
those communities. Yeah, but but what's that look
like? And simply will not be to the
scale of what they were getting from the CPB.
That just doesn't exist, especially in these rural
communities. And so those smaller communities
will be less safe by not having public broadcasting entities

(07:52):
that are looking out for them. Because a lot of commercial
entities aren't looking out for them or are automated or are
owned by conglomerates far, far away.
So this is affecting a lot of small stations a lot, and it's
really disheartening to see thishappen.
KZM will be fine, at least for the next couple of years.

(08:15):
We might have to downgrade a little bit in fiscal year 2027.
We don't know what that looks like yet.
So for now, Underplayed will will be around and as long as
there is a production studio, Underplayed will still be here.
Underplayed isn't receiving any funding from KZM and so we're

(08:36):
not being underfunded by CPB being.
Underfunded, we, it's, we're sort of detached by one level
where we use the facilities and the equipment, but it's we're
not putting money in our pocket to help pay for games exactly,
for instance that we play. Now that is to say that the
possibility does exist that KZM will no longer be able to afford
rent at this facility and may have to downgrade to a smaller

(08:58):
facility, in which case we mightlose access to a production
studio, in which case we would have to re evaluate what
underplayed looks like at that time.
And then and then as a result ofthis rescission package, the CPB
has very recently as of this recording announced that they
will just be ceasing operations altogether.

(09:20):
Yeah. So that's so unfortunate.
It's decades of of legacy and educational support there.
Haven't they been around for like 60 years?
Yeah, it's horrible. This is horrible.
It is and getting a a better administration unfortunately
will not fix that because this entity is going away.
So in light of all this, the Corporation for Public

(09:43):
Broadcasting closing down, whichwas responsible for giving
funding to lots of local and small and rural stations, In
light of all that, what do you tell people who rely on local
stations? What?
What is it is it's be more mindful about giving to your
local station. Is that all we can say right

(10:04):
now? That's really all you can do,
maybe even volunteer your time if you have the means to do so
for some of these smaller stations.
Like the battles already lost essentially.
That is so unfortunate. Yeah.
We, we grieve for a lot of thosesmaller stations that won't
survive this. And it's basically a, a foregone

(10:25):
conclusion that that will happen.
Yeah, it's just so unfortunate. And you know, with that, we have
a lot of gratitude that we live in the community that we live in
and that KZM is receives a majority of its support from
listeners. And then they've got a really
good underwriting director rightnow that is really good about
building those relationships with businesses.

(10:47):
So KZM is going to survive for quite a while at least, but what
it looks like with that funding hit, we just can't say for sure.
Yeah. In the future, as things
develop, if there are updates, we'll share those probably on
social media and on our show, especially big impactful

(11:09):
updates. But for now, there is some hope
in just being able to keep doingthis for a while the way that
we're doing it, and I feel at least thankful for that.
That's that's the silver lining.We're, we're incredibly lucky.
It's, it's incredible that a community our size even has
something like Kay's, UM, for aslong as it has.

(11:30):
So we are very fortunate here and we wish the best for
everybody that wasn't quite so fortunate.
Yeah. Well, this is kind of a
difficult topic to move on from,but we will move on now.
And before we do, there are a few very easy ways to support
our show. They cost nothing and they take
almost no time at all. We would really appreciate you

(11:52):
doing these things for us if youhaven't already.
One, give us a follow and a fivestar rating on podcast platforms
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sharing our podcast by repostingour stuff on social media and

(12:15):
telling your indie game loving friends about us means the
world. And as always, we love you.
Thank you for listening. We're going to move on now to
our secret games. In Secret Games, we're each

(12:41):
going to reveal an indie game we've been playing recently and
we're going to review it. We don't talk about what games
we're picking in advance, so I don't know what Disco Cola is
going to review today. He doesn't know what I'm going
to review today. It's just for fun.
Let's keep it a secret and reveal it right now.
So we'll start with you, Disco Cola.
Let the mystery be no more. Reveal your secrets game for

(13:03):
Episode 81 of Underplayed. My Secret Game this episode
comes from and I'm going to maybe ronounce this wrong Louis
Rigo an it is called Iris and the Giants.

(13:47):
I'm familiar with this. I know you've been streaming
this. You knew it was coming at some
point, probably. I figured actually maybe later
in the season, I didn't know howlong the game was.
It actually kind of seemed like a longer game.
So it was a longer game and I did have to finish it off
stream, but I didn't play too much off.
Stream. OK, I had no finger on the pulse

(14:08):
of how far along you were. I saw you streamed a few times
but I had no idea like how closeyou were to finish it.
Really. Either, to be honest.
I mean, I knew I knew the Giantson level 20, but that's about
all I knew. OK, so yeah, this came out a lot
more recently than I realized. This came out back in like March
of 2023. In Iris and the Giant, you play

(14:29):
as Iris, and when the game begins, Iris is in the car with
her dad reading a book of Greek mythology on the way to diving
practice, and at diving practice, the narration implies
that when it's her turn, she jumps to herself, imposed doom,
and in the scene, clearly Iris is struggling with life.

(14:50):
When we take control, Iris is onthe ferry with the ferryman, and
the ferryman hands Iris a deck of cards and we set out to climb
through the levels of the labyrinth to reach the giant.
Is it like Karen the Ferryman? Really.
Well, I yeah, I think it's implied given the Greek
mythology book. Yes, I I would assume so, even
though it's not explicitly mentioned.

(15:11):
I would believe that too. And I've actually been thinking.
We've encountered Karen a lot intons of games we've played.
Like I the other night I did a count and in all the games we've
played I I could come up with atleast like 4.
Wow, that's even more than I remember.
Yeah, OK. It's.
Pretty wild. Well, add this one to the list.
OK, will do. Like a back lock?
There you go back. Locked Karen appearance.

(15:34):
Karen Cameo. Karen Cinematic.
Universe on our way. On each floor we will face waves
of different monsters. Sometimes they're referred to as
Quote My Demons, and we must useour cards to attack our demons
to clear the path for progression.
Monsters will increase in numberand variation the higher we

(15:54):
climb. As we defeat monsters in clear
rooms, we will gain access to treasure chests or level up and
gain access to passive abilities, cards, and just
general permanent upgrades. And as you play the game, you
can also find what are called Memories, which will add back
story to Iris. As you complete certain

(16:16):
challenges, you will also unlockImaginary Friends, and Imaginary
Friends will just add buffs as long as you have them equipped.
I should note that this game uses the exhaust method for
cards. If you're familiar with Slay the
Spire, once you use the card once, it's gone.
So unless otherwise stated by another game rule, that card
disappears as soon as you use it.

(16:38):
So as long as you keep your health up, keep your deck
stocked, and learn the attack patterns for each monster,
you'll be able to make your way to the Giant on the 20th floor.
OK, it's only 20 floors. Only 20 floors, he says, but
only 20. But there's a big but.
There's there's a lot of different kinds of monsters,
there's branching paths. So that's pretty much it.

(17:01):
Do you have any questions beforeI move on to like what I what I
jive with, what I don't? I don't think so.
So well I guess so like roguelike deck builder would be
the most accurate. That's how I would describe it,
yeah. There's there's some meta
progression too. So you you get that a little bit
and that does help you get a little bit further.

(17:21):
We love that. Yes, we love that.
Yes, straight death. Hang off a Cliff and start
again. Not always my jam.
OK, so for stuff that I like about Iris and the Giants, as is
often the case, I bought the game for the art style.
I thought that this game was using an artistic direction I
wasn't really seeing anywhere else.

(17:42):
I can't think of a game visuallythat it reminds me of, and I'm
kind of into that. It's very restrained and the
number of colors it's using, butit uses them very cleverly.
Yeah, and it's there's not a lotof like geometric shapes going
on. It's it's very simple geometric
shapes to the character designs,just hard bold lines, but then

(18:04):
also watercolor backgrounds at times.
It's just a really fascinating art direction.
I like trying to think 3 moves ahead in this game.
It's like, how can I get the treasure chest that is 4 rows
back taking the least amount of damage?
How can I prevent interacting with this large enemy that's

(18:27):
moving its way forward? Do I focus on this enemy with a
lot of armor or spend those cards defeating three other
smaller enemies? So there's there's a lot of
calculations going on each time you take your turn and it's it's
it's a fun calculation most of the time.
So I really enjoyed that. And then because of this, I get

(18:49):
a lot out of the next thing I like about the game.
It just it has that one more tryvibe that I love from rogue
likes at times. Just whenever I fail, as long as
I felt like my last run was fairand I lost in a in a fairway,
I'm like, OK, I'm ready to go again.
Let's go, cool. Sometimes if I lose and what

(19:09):
seems like an unfair way, I'll be like, all right, I'm time to
put it. I'm done with this for the day.
Oh, what were some of your play times for your sessions?
Were you playing for hours at a time?
Yeah, well, a lot of what I played was on stream, and so
it's probably like 2 to 3 1/2 hours per session in most
sessions. I actually wrote down my PS-5

(19:34):
clock that it took me to beat this game, and I played it for
25 hours. So I'm really happy that I
started like in the middle of last season, knowing that
eventually I would use this as asecret game.
There are multiple systems at work that will level up Iris
during a run. So one of them, you can collect

(19:55):
these little red crystals on theground, and after you collect so
many, you'll level up. Another way you level up is from
defeating enemies, and then a third way is encountering and
defeating boss monsters that might show up.
And there will be times where you'll be getting down to the
wire. You know your health's really
low. And you'll defeat a boss and

(20:16):
maybe a couple of other smaller enemies.
And after that battle you'll level up from defeating the
enemies. And then there's some crystals
on the ground that were behind them.
You get the crystals and you level up a second time.
And then you get the boss pick up because they they drop an
item that you have to get to 1st.
And then you level up a third time.
And that's all within the span of like 5 seconds.

(20:38):
That's a really, really satisfying victory when those
all sort of time out at the sametime.
Occasionally this game will feature special puzzle
challenges and I think you wouldlove these.
These are really fun and I thinkthey offer a fair chance to
overcome them. That being said, some of them
seem to be literally impossible,at least for.

(21:01):
I was just like sitting there and looking at it over and over
and I couldn't figure out what alternate order of operations I
could have done to overcome thispuzzle.
So when I get there and I can't figure it out, I feel dumb cuz I
know that it made it so that it's possible.
I just can't. I can't see the the light

(21:22):
through the trees. A.
Literally impossible challenge sitting in front of you.
That reminds me of Rogue Legacy in some parts.
And then lastly, I think the music is really good.
It's mostly subdued, but it's all really solid and I I wish it
was a little bit easier to access because I want to give it
a more dedicated listen, but I think the music's really good.

(21:42):
As far as things I don't like, alot of my frustrations with this
game can be boiled down to difficulty, and that kind of
comes with the territory of a rogue light deck builder.
But it did get pretty difficult for me in a lot of different
small ways and kind of resulted in that longer play time that I
wasn't necessarily prepared to commit to when I first started

(22:03):
it. But like I said, I was very
lucky that I started it last season because I I knew that the
estimated time online was like alittle bit lower than I was
going to achieve. But apart from general
difficulty, if I drilled down ona few specific things first, I
would say that enemies will sometimes have Shields, and

(22:26):
they're especially problematic. And it feels like it doesn't
translate in functionality to how Iris's version of the shield
works. And it can really gum up the
process if you don't happen to have just the right cards to
deal with these Shields. So you're learning about how
your shield works and then it doesn't apply on the other side.
Yeah, they're. Sort of misinformed.

(22:46):
Their Shields are way way way better than mine and it kind of
sucks. Related to that, kind of certain
enemy types are a little too overpowered, especially for how
you know early. They appear on lower floors
compared to enemies that come after.
I'm thinking of like the four sword cats and especially the

(23:07):
anvil boars. I don't know if they're boars or
bats, but they're sitting on an anvil.
I think they are just like a little bit too overpowered for
how early you encounter them. And then I would point out that
there are certain systems and behaviors that aren't
necessarily explained as well asthey could be.
Certain cards will maybe stun certain types of enemies, but

(23:28):
not others. And I don't always I won't
always be sure which ones and why.
And then the one system I specifically struggled with in
this game, you can complete a run.
By that I mean fail, and there'sa chance that you'll start the
next run under the sign of blank.
It might be the sign of the cat,or the sign of the boar, or the

(23:50):
worst, in my opinion, the sign of the snake.
And when you get that, it doesn't really explain what this
does or how long it lasts. And in my case, I was having
some of my worst runs ever in the sign of the snake, which
seems to turn your Archers from cats into snakes and then snake
type enemies reduce your maximumHP when they hit you, which can

(24:14):
snowball really fast. And I couldn't really figure out
how to counter that. And it seems to last multiple
runs. And then suddenly I started
another run under the sign of the boar.
And once that happened, I basically made it to the end of
the game 'cause I was no longer dealing with these like
disproportionate number of snakes in my enemy pools.

(24:36):
So it seems to change enemy types, but it just, it doesn't
explain what it's doing. And you know, I didn't
understand that. But in addition to that, you
don't seem to have any control over which sign you are put
under and how to change it if you want to change it.
So it's just like, eventually you'll get lucky and it's like,

(24:58):
all right, sign of the snakes done.
Now you're under the sign of thebore and that's that's just like
luck. And it can take multiple runs
for that luck to show up, and that kind of sucks.
That's too bad that you can't atleast pick from a small pool of
them. Like kind of like Rogue Legacy.
Give us three options maybe. Yeah.
And then that way, if you know about the snake, you can avoid

(25:18):
that one. Hopefully it gives you two
others. Or at least like do something on
a specific floor that allows that to show up at the end when
you fail. Like and maybe there is
something like that and I but I don't, I don't know that I'm
doing it when it happens. Anyways, Iris and the Giant is
an addictive and mostly fun gamethat is easy on the eyes of all

(25:39):
times. Getting snippets of Iris's
history and having that act as apermanent upgrade in itself
incentivizes me to seek out the story of this game, which I
would otherwise maybe just passively read one time and move
on. I had an overall good time and
would love to keep playing to complete my card collection.

(25:59):
Unfortunately, the game ended upbeing a much bigger undertaking
than anticipated and is ultimately what is holding me
back from finishing that collection, at least for now.
But that's not a small deal for me.
I'm ultimately positive on this game and I recommend it to
anyone that likes unique art styles, deck builders, and has
the time to commit. So I give it an 8 point O out of

(26:22):
10. Wonderful.
I have enjoyed seeing a few moments of this as you're
streaming it. And I'm wondering, you know, you
mentioned the the Greek mythology book and how we sort
of dive into this world on the way to swimming practice.
What is it? Yeah, we're going to diving.
Practice diving. Practice.
How much mythological inspiration are you noticing as

(26:44):
you're going through? Like, are you recognizing, oh,
this creature is from this mythological story or are you
versed in that stuff? So I I know a good amount, you
know, if you had grew up in the 90s, you had like this like boom
of a lot of Greek mythological stuff like God of War and the
movie Hercules and it seems likeseveral games at the time.

(27:09):
And I had to study it in school.I remember being in like middle
high school and. 7th grade was the big Greek mythology.
Anyways, most of the enemy typesseem to be some sort of Greek
mythological creature. You've got your cats and your
snakes that are just cats and snakes it kind of seems like.
But there's Cyclops, there's Pandora's Box, there's Medusa,

(27:34):
there's the Hydra. So there's a lot that you
encounter that is very clearly pulling from Greek mythology.
Nice. And you mentioned the memories
of Iris and how this sort of allstems from having a hard time.
And I understand that, you know,some of this might be spoiler
ish to get into. But what I've noticed recently

(27:57):
is a lot of the most impactful stories that I've encountered in
indie games have to do with children or young people dealing
with a problem, maybe finding out who they are.
Maybe it's escaping a situation,maybe it's finding their way
back to home or something like that.
So I think of games like the Wild at Heart and Spirit Fairer,

(28:18):
Florence, Carto Miniatures, Mutacione.
Do you think that this game sortof enters that pantheon of
touching games about younger people?
I think if you're the right person, I'm very fortunate that
I didn't go through a lot of what Iris seems to have gone
through. But at the same time.

(28:41):
I feel like objectively it just doesn't focus a lot or enough on
it to make make it quite as impactful as something like a
mutatione. It's like referencing things.
It's telling you things and it'snot going terribly deep with.
It and and the construction of the world is obviously like an

(29:02):
abstract, you know, formation that represents these hardships.
But like, you don't get to spendenough time in IRS's past.
To. Like I think get quite to that
level, if you're the right person, you might disagree with
me and that's that's fine. Yeah, I could see that.
I've. I've played games like that
where I could recognize that someone might really identify

(29:24):
with this in a way that I can't just because I have a different
life experience. But I do recognize what it's
telling me and some of the analogies it's drawing here.
Cool. Well, where can you play Iris
and the Giants? Iris and the Giant is available
on and there's a lot Linux, Mac,PC, Android which might be a
great way to play this actually.Xbox One, Xbox Series, Nintendo

(29:49):
Switch, PS4 which is the versionI played, and PS-5.
Nice. All right, it is time for my
secret game. My secret game is one that I've
had on my list to play for a while, and there have been a
couple seasons in the past whereI thought, OK, this is the
season I'm going to play it. And then something else comes
up. Maybe it just doesn't feel like

(30:10):
the right time. Maybe I just am in the mood for
something else and I finally played this game that I've been
looking forward to for years. My secret game is called
Assemble with Care. You ever wonder why we get so
attached to things? When you think about it, all
this stuff we own is just screwsand wires.

(30:31):
Except sometimes it isn't. A whole life can be captured in
the flash of a camera, wounds healed by picking up a phone.

(30:53):
Even the smallest object can hold the biggest meaning.
I have heard of this but I am not really familiar.
Oh, is this Wilmot Pax's bags? I'm just going off with a.
Thumbnail you just sent me. That's funny actually in the
well there are two chapters where like you unpack and then
pack a suitcase. But no, it's not quite an

(31:16):
inventory management. It is a is a tinkering game
about disassembling things, fixing them, and then
reassembling them. All right, cool.
So Assemble With Care is a 2020 puzzle narrative game.
It was developed and published by us two games.
The game synopsis from the Steamstorefront reads quotes.
Repair old school objects in this cozy puzzle game.

(31:39):
Join antique restorer Maria as she arrives in the sun soaked
town of Belleriva and sat out ona journey of helping the
townsfolk reconnect. End Quote.
So this game comes to us again from us two games.
They are the creators of the Monument Valley games, which I
haven't played myself. I've played the demo for the

(31:59):
third one, actually, but those are games I want to play
eventually as well. So some people might have played
the Monument Valley games, and Ithink they bring a lot of their
sensibilities over to this game.And you play as Maria, who is a
young traveler and antique repair woman.
And back home, Maria's parents run an antique shop, and they

(32:20):
wanted her to stay with them andhelp run the shop, but she has
instead chosen to be on the road.
For a year she has been moving from city to city fixing
people's broken things, as the game states everything from
family heirlooms to VCRS. So you can imagine she's quite
handy, and she travels to the fictional Spanish town of

(32:43):
Belleriva to sightsee and take arest.
That's where this game begins, and the first level has you
opening up her suitcase with your mouse if you're playing on
PC, and clicking on objects to remove them.
And then throughout the next dozen chapters, you take in a
very simple story of exploring Belleriva and meeting some of

(33:05):
its inhabitants, some of whom need your help fixing things.
And these characters include a girl named Izzy and her dad
Joseph, who have just lost the mother and the wife and their
family. There's Carmen, who owns a cafe,
and her sister Helena, who have very different personalities.
And you fix things such as a cassette player, a statuette, a

(33:29):
camera, a neon sign, a wristwatch, and so on.
Each level is focusing on one objects you're repairing, and
then a little bit of story to goalong with that object and the
person whose object it is. And so this takes place over 13
chapters. There's also an epilogue, and
it's a pretty short game. This is a game you can finish in
a few hours. It kind of just sails right

(33:51):
along. You're repairing something,
getting some story, then that's the end of that chapter.
I'm each chapter on average might be around 10 to 15
minutes. So it does add up over time,
giving you a nice pretty long sit of puzzles.
And what I liked about Assemble with Care is the visuals.

(34:13):
This game is full of bright and beautiful colors.
I love how this game looks when you're getting some of the bits
of story you're getting these like painted scenes to go along
with the words. It feels like you're reading a
storybook kind of, which is really cool.
But then also there are touches like backgrounds that have stop
motion looping effects. So while you're repairing

(34:34):
something, there's just this nice touch of movement in the
background to help bring the scene to life.
But then I also love the soundscape.
I think this has a masterful soundscape.
I love the diegetic sounds we hear.
Maria will talk about entering ashop in one of the narrative
segments, and as she says that, you hear a little doorbell.

(34:56):
I can hear it in my head right now, Ding Ding Ling.
And it's just like little touches like that that coincide
with what she's describing in her story.
And this game is voice acted. And I love the voice acting all
throughout. I think these people sound super
believable. I also love the music by Thomas
Williams. Just a very peaceful soundtrack.

(35:16):
And 1:00, I'm going to go back and listen to for sure.
I also really like that the story is digestible, and we're
getting the story between the gameplay moments for maybe just
a few minutes. But it really does add up to
this feeling of community, this feeling of helping people, and

(35:37):
it's very touching. And I think this game highlights
the importance of our things. We recognize that things are
temporary, like material possessions aren't the most
important thing in the world, but this game reminds us that
our things tell our stories. They hold our memories, they
remind us who we are, and I think that is a very powerful
theme in this game. It's kind of like unpacking in

(36:00):
that way. So I think if you like tinkering
with things, if you like moving things and you like just sort of
celebrating the objects and how they represent who we are, like
in a game like unpacking, I think you'd love Assemble with
Care. I also really enjoy the
tactility of working with these items.

(36:21):
When you're finally in puzzle mode and you're fixing
something, it's almost like you're using this workspace.
And as you remove objects, maybelike a lid to a battery
compartment, that lid goes off to the sides and these screws
that you unscrew go in a little bowl.
But then also sometimes, like with this cassette player, you

(36:44):
need to repair the cassette and the cassette player.
And so after repairing the cassette player, put that aside
and you need to take the cassette and put it center stage
and repair the tape that's in it.
So moving things around, it feels like you're actually
messing with things. It feels like you're tinkering
all the time. I like little movements too,

(37:05):
like removing screws. If you're playing this on PC,
you just drag your mouse to the side and the screw just unscrews
all the way and it just feels really nice.
You don't have to move your mouse a lot, but it feels like
you're intentionally doing that action to perform that.
There are some things I didn't like as much.
Sometimes needing to put objectsinside of other objects requires

(37:27):
you to switch whatever's in youractive spot in front of you.
So you can't just like, click and drag to rotate with any
objects that's in your field of view.
You have to select which object needs to be the active one.
And sometimes it feels like you need to make a lot of selections
to put the thing that goes inside of the bigger thing in

(37:48):
the thing. I I would get it mixed up a lot
of the time. Like I would have the cassette
sitting in front of me and I'd have the player and I just drag
the player over to the cassette.Oh, that's the wrong way.
You have to do it the opposite way.
Does that kind of make sense? And you can click and drag to
rotate items, which is really cool.
Again, it feels like you're holding something and turning it

(38:10):
with a lot of precision, and youcan go like degree by degree,
but sometimes it can feel a little bit slippery when you're
rotating things. Like you can click and drag to
rotate something, but then it kind of keeps spinning a little
bit and then it's a little bit too rotated the direction you
wanted. And there could be a sensitivity
for this. I didn't mess with anything like
that. And then the game is really

(38:31):
brief. The story is powerful, but none
of the characters felt like they'll stay with me for a
terribly long time, which might also be kind of the point of the
game. People come and go in our lives
when we're in a new place. So I kind of get that.
But I wanted even more from those side characters, like Izzy

(38:51):
and her dad and the two sisters.But overall, I think this is a
great game that shows us how ourthings reflect who we are.
And you know, like an old objects, like a camera that is
worthy of a second chance through being repaired, so too
are we like the people who use those things.
This game kind of reminded me ofthat lesson.

(39:14):
I think it's relaxing. It's very artfully crafted
through its visuals and its sounds.
I wish we could spend even more time getting to know these
people. The journey is just really brief
to the point where I don't thinkabout it as much afterward as I
was hoping to. But I recommend this to pretty
much everybody. I think everyone should play
this. I rate this an 8.5 out of 10.

(39:37):
Heck yeah. It's playable on PC, which is
where I played it, Mac and iOS, and I actually think iOS would
be an interesting platform to play this on, just like using
your thumbs rather than a mouse.I just didn't get to try it on a
platform like that. Cool.
Well, what I'm curious about is I'm I'm just looking at the
trailer here. As you're taking some of these

(39:58):
things apart, are you learning anything about how their real
life counterpart actually functions?
Like is there? Are you like taking apart this
record player and being like? Oh, that's how that works, huh?
OK. I would not trust this as like a
1 to 1 manual for how like a projector works.

(40:22):
But there are some basic like sort of rudimentary concepts
that are communicated. Like when you're repairing a, a
slide projector, you have to guide, you have to install these
mirrors and light will shine from an internal component onto
the mirrors in a series of reflections out through the
lens. And so that's telling you that,

(40:43):
oh, the, the general idea of a projector is that IT projects
light that is then bounced in a couple of ways until it gets to
the compartment that it needs togo out of.
So like there's that, but I wouldn't be able to take a
broken projector and fix it before you, you know.
And so I think it does simplify things in a way that is really

(41:04):
cool. There's there's a watch with a
lot of gears and the puzzle is just like what gears go in which
slots. There are lots of different
sized gears. I understand that a watch has
gears in it already from just life, you know, that's sort of a
thing that's known, but that one's more of a puzzle.
That one's more of let's find the gears and which spots they

(41:26):
go into to make the right fit inthis internal compartment.
So I'd say there's a little bit of teaching.
I guess I have some appreciationand understanding about some
objects, but not in a way that makes me feel like terribly
smarter. OK, interesting note.
I'll ask you how how much did you get to play with cassette

(41:48):
tapes when you were younger? Because we're.
We're our age kind of like is definitely CD era, but some of
us maybe especially if we were poor, had a lot of cassette
tapes. What's your experience with
that? My experience really is only
limited to the fact that I had aTeddy Ruxpin.

(42:09):
Did you have one? No.
I had a Teddy Ruxpin. You're you're aware, I know of.
Teddy Ruxpin, I know what it is and it came back for a little
while a couple years ago. Oh, it is.
Yeah, I don't think it was cassette tape based, but there.
Was a Teddy Ruxpin toy well? I used to put the cassette in
his back, you know, and I forgetwhat it did.
Did it sing or did it talk? Something like that.

(42:31):
But that was more about the act of just like inserting something
into a toy. And that felt nice, like the,
again, the tactility. But I didn't play with
cassettes. I didn't like play music off of
cassettes. I think my parents had them.
By the time I was interacting with music on physical media, it
was a lot of C DS. Yeah, OK.

(42:52):
I just, I'm looking at this trailer again.
And something I learned as an adult is that you're most people
like take a pencil to like rewind a cassette that became
unwound. Yeah, you stick it in one of the
holes and you just. Twist it like a wrench.
I just use my finger like I justwent.
Maybe a little bit slower, but yeah, that never occurred to me

(43:14):
and never even knew it was a thing until I was older.
Yeah. That's that's just an anecdote
that I like to talk about any time that comes.
Up Well, I think that does two things.
One is it shows sort of the ingenuity of using something
like a pencil and the other thing is it commits to the style
of I guess you never see your hands in this game.
Like in good point in the narrative bits where we're we

(43:35):
see pictures of our main character Maria, like we see her
hands there, but when we're doing the puzzles, it's not like
she's picking up the things and you see her fingers.
You are clicking and dragging and the hand is invisible.
So I guess that's a way to get around that too.
Interesting. Yeah.
And then you said these, this isfrom the same company that did

(43:58):
the Monument Valleys. Yes.
One of your complaints was that you want a little bit more time
with these people. Maybe you won't get more time
with these people, but do you think they'll keep making a
sample with care the same way they keep making Monument
Valley? I don't get the impression that
that will happen. I think this might be a one and
done because this came out in 2020 and they've made 3 Monument

(44:18):
Valley games. I don't know when the first one
came out, but Monument Valley 3 just released so I I could see
them doing a third thing from here.
I don't know if they'll do Monument Valley 4.
I don't know enough about that to make a guess, but I would
like to see what else they have up their sleeves.
Yeah, they've got a they've got a great art style on their

(44:40):
shoulders. Yeah, I think that's one of the
strengths of their studio. They're just very artful
visually and I love the music and and soundscape here as well.
So those are our secret games. Iris and the Giants and assemble
with care. We will move on to our review of
Rogue Legacy. It is our featured game.

(45:11):
So Rogue Legacy is a 2013 Rogue Lights developed and published
by Cellar Door Games. The game synopsis from the Steam
storefront reads quotes. Rogue Legacy is the genealogical
Rogue Lights where anyone can bea hero.
Each time you die, your child will succeed you.
Every child is unique. One child might be color blind,

(45:33):
another might be a dwarf with Vertigo.
But that's OK, because no one isperfect.
You don't have to be to succeed.Before we move on, can I ask 2

(46:12):
questions? Sure.
Is this the genesis of the term Rogue like Rogue light?
Is it come from Rogue Legacy? That is a good question, and I
think we'll talk about this game's legacy later, but I think
this is one of the earliest examples of a rogue light where

(46:35):
it was very popular and inspirational.
And we should clarify, rogue like games are more hardcore.
Really the difference between rogue like and rogue light is
how much meta progression is there.
That was my second question. I never knew what the difference
was. That's.
The big one is rogue. Light games tend to have more

(46:56):
permanent upgrades and progression that helps you as
you go along. As you stray more toward the
side of the spectrum where you're doing a fresh restart,
more things are wiped. You're not really getting that
meta progression as much. That's more on the rogue like
size. So I guess maybe the more

(47:17):
specific question to my first point is, is there a game before
this that has Rogue in its? Title that would suggest it is
coming from that game like the term rogue like and rogue light
come from. Rogue some something?
Yeah, a game called Rogue from forever ago.
Or, or is it? I just don't understand the D&D

(47:38):
class of rogue and I don't know what it means.
Oh well, the original I think the now.
I'm not a historian on this, butthe original game Rogue came out
decades ago. I mean I this is a game from is
it from the 80s? There's AI didn't even know
there was a game called Rogue. Game Rogue is a dungeon crawling
video game by Michael Toy and Glenn Wickman.

(48:02):
It was originally developped around 1980 for Unix based mini
computer systems as a freely distributed executable.
Looks like this is an 80s game. Early 80s.
I mean all games from the 80s have no meta progression.
And it led to the naming of the rogue like genre.
So that is the that's the history.
Interesting. And I've sort of always known

(48:25):
that, but I'm not aware of any games that were using Rogue in
the title referencing back to Rogue like this.
But that doesn't mean there aren't any pre 2013.
There are a lot of video games in the world.
So I don't know. But this is, I think, one of the
first widely recognized ones. And this is over a decade old

(48:46):
now. So it was really influential, I
think, and just one of those early Rogue lights that was
saying, hey, we're influenced bythis classic game, but we're
also adding in progression that is permanent.
And I think that's something we've seen a lot over the past
decade and we continue to see. So that sort of gets into the

(49:07):
history and significance and oneof the reasons why it was in our
list of featured games. But in this game, it's a 2D side
scrolling game. We start with text on screen
that says, quote, my duties are to my family, but I am only
loyal to myself, End Quote. And so it's sort of this cold

(49:27):
open where we play as this knight who approaches a king and
slays him. And all of this acts as the
tutorial where we're learning about movement and how to attack
things. But you don't know why this is
all happening. You don't know who the king is,
You don't know who you are. And this kicks off a lineage
where you then play as Sir Lee, who explores a castle trying to

(49:48):
seek a big treasure. And Sir Lee is not likely to
make it through alive. This castle likes to kill
people, and his heirs carry the torch.
Each one with a different name, class, and set of traits.
And the goal is to explore this big castle with your lineage of
adventurers, fighting its enemies along the way and making

(50:11):
it further until you find a treasure or your purpose, or
both. Do you think that sounds fair?
The The story's pretty light in this game, but I'd say that the
story is really like. Bookended.
Yeah. I really, you get like pieces
here and there from somebody's point of view.

(50:32):
I don't remember who exactly, but but yeah, most of the story
I got that I felt was necessary was at the end.
I was like, OK, got it. Yeah, it's, and it's pretty
straightforward by that point, but like we have that opening
sequence, that's the tutorial area, if you will, and then a
lot of gameplay in the middle and then the end.

(50:52):
And that's where we learn stuff.So, yeah, how about what we do
in that big middle section? What's going on in that middle
section? For gameplay, yeah.
In Rogue Legacy you get most of the standard platforming affair.
Your most basic naked controls consist of a pretty solid
default moving speed. You also have a jump and a sword

(51:15):
to swing, and you have a basic magic attack.
There are other moves you can doby purchasing them at the Manor.
You purchase stuff at the Manor using gold that you find on your
runs. And you you gain gold from
felling enemies and destroying furniture and other fixtures
like chandeliers and crates. And this will be arguably one of

(51:36):
the most important parts of the game.
It's just collecting a lot of gold.
Yeah, you want to get rich? When you fall in runs, you will
pick your offspring from a list of three, and these offspring
will feature randomized traits, especially early on.
You mentioned some of them, you know, color blindness,
coprolalia, hypochondria, gigantism, dwarfism, peripheral

(52:02):
arterial disease, and several more.
And then these traits will become more common in lineage
after they have been chosen for the first time.
You can also unlock new classes at the Manor such as Paladin,
Hokage, Spellsword and Mage, andthen you can also unlock
upgraded versions of those classes.
You will also unlock at the Manor of Blacksmith and an

(52:25):
Enchantress, and then from them you may purchase armor and
mobility upgrades respectively. After you have found the
corresponding blueprints and runes on other runs and then the
Enchantress specifically and herrunes is where other inputs come
in, you may be able to unlock extra jumps, dashes, and flight.

(52:48):
But I didn't mess with flight soI don't really know how that
plays as far as input. Yeah, that has to.
Well, I got flight through a special class that I unlocked in
the manner, but I didn't like it, so I didn't play with that a
ton. But it is a thing.
You can fly in this game, you can do a lot.
All the different classes do different things.
They all have their specialties.And then lastly for controls and

(53:10):
inputs, upgraded versions of classes will have a special
skill by pressing what is on PlayStation the triangle button.
One example is that the upgradedBarbarian class has a shout, and
this shout will push enemies further back.
Yes, it says like Farro Deuce. Yeah, it just says Skyrim.
Reference. Yeah, and in some cases it will

(53:30):
also delete projectiles. That's pretty cool and helpful
in very specific situations. Other upgrades at the Manor
include what you might expect, upgraded HPMP damage, carry
weight for armor, and then otherstuff you might not necessarily
think of like increased money drops and decreased fee for
Karen. Appearing in two games today, I

(53:53):
didn't think about that. That's the theme.
Oh, that's why I was coming up with that list the other night,
just because I saw playing this.Yeah, because we were playing
this. Holy crap.
So. Funny, I didn't even think about
Karen Guest appeared on an episode of Underplayed.
Gosh. Anyways, there's a lot at play
in this game. So this is like this is most of
what to expect. Is there something I'm

(54:14):
forgetting as far as like controls, inputs?
Oh, I don't know. There's a lot, a lot going on.
It's hard to cover everything. But yeah, there are just tons of
skills, traits, runes, things you can do with the Castle I.
Guess there's different kinds ofplatforms.
You've got those semi solid onesthat you can jump down through.
You've got the ones that you Pogo on top of, yes, that will

(54:36):
open up into solid platforms. You can Pogo to a point, yeah,
which I didn't mention, but you have a downward swing with your
sword. Yeah, but the game really opens
up as you're buying upgrades in the manner where we're spending
our gold from the previous run. And yeah, I I'd say that right
away from the Manor, that is where the Rogue Lights

(54:59):
classification becomes really apparent here, where these are
permanent upgrades and there areso many upgrades in this game.
Yeah, there's a ton. So many just.
When you think you got them all,there's like two or three more.
I know and you you see this castle, this Manor, this upgrade
tree expanding, it's this castlethat's building and building as
you buy something. Just putting 1 upgrade point

(55:19):
into a new skill that will open up another tree of upgrades and
so you kind of don't know how far it's going to go for a
while. I'm confident I still don't have
all the little squares on my manner.
You might not. It takes a while.
And I played this way back in 2013 for the first time.
I played it in December 2013. I looked at my Steam

(55:42):
achievements and I saw the like time stamps on them and back
then I think that Steam cloud saves were a thing.
And unfortunately just earlier today I tried opening up the
steam version to see if the cloud had my say if it didn't.
So I lost 30 plus hours of game time on that version and I I

(56:06):
think I got into like level. I don't even know 200 plus I I
played so much in that time, butin recent weeks I've played it
on PlayStation 4. So I got up to like level.
I don't know one at least 150. I want to say I got so I got
quite far in this and I was ableto accomplish everything
including getting credits, but not as I didn't do as much of

(56:29):
like the end game grinding that I did back then.
So Disco Cola, now that we have played Rogue Legacy, we've
caught up on a pretty classic indie game here.
What are your thoughts on this game?
I'm super curious because you'renew to this and I've known about
it for a long time. What do you think?

(56:50):
I think I might have dropped a little hint the last time we
were here recording. I don't remember what I said, if
I said anything but. I'm going to be totally frank
with you. I was dreading this game like
it's it's medieval, it's got a long play time, it's medieval
and several upgrade purchases. But.

(57:11):
And it's medieval. Yes.
Did I forget to mention that it is medieval?
Not your favorite? Thing just.
Just for people's contexts. Disco doesn't like medieval
things. It's it's true, but much to my
surprise I like almost everything about this game.
Wow, I really, really like this game.

(57:31):
Wow 1st and I almost forgot to put this in my notes.
I love vampirism. Like without vampirism on
multiple pieces of my armor I probably would not have beaten
this game. I love vampirism, it's so
helpful. So explain what's going on here.
So you can buy different pieces of armor and those pieces of

(57:52):
armor might have different traits.
Sometimes they're just boosting your overall stats like attack,
they might increase gold drops, but some of them.
And there's one vampirism piece for each of your different armor
equip slots. So for a lot of the game I had
all, I think 4 out of five vampirism pieces of armor.

(58:14):
On so you're getting like 8 HP when he kills.
Yeah, at least, yeah. And that was very necessary to
my progression because I am taking hella hits.
So you're just healing every time you kill something, and you
kill a lot of things in this. Game kill a lot of things, yeah.
So vampirism was one of my favorite things.
So I just I didn't want to forget to mention that
specifically the pixel art in this game is actually really

(58:39):
uniquely sophisticated. Like, at first glance, I kind of
find it really unassuming. But as I progress further and
encounter different enemy types,but especially like bosses,
there's some like classic technique being used here, but
it still looks mostly modern. And this game does that thing
where some enemy types are just like physically upscaled

(59:01):
versions of other enemy types, and some of them don't look
great. I'm thinking of like the big
version of the flaming skull andthe massive skeleton twins.
Those sprites don't look the best, just upscaled.
But I don't know, something about this game prevents other
upscaled sprites from looking out of place.
It just it they still like the eyeballs.

(59:22):
Even the upscaled eyeballs I think look just like they fit in
with the smaller eyeballs. Yeah.
And it like, if nothing else, it's a really quick way the game
communicates that, hey, this is like what you've seen before.
You could argue it's like an asset swap or whatever, right?
Or an asset flip. That's fine.
I that never bothers me. No, almost never.
Bothers because like it's, it's doing two things.

(59:45):
It's it's referencing something you've seen.
So there's familiarity, but alsosince it's big and maybe a
different color, you expect it'sgoing to be different a little
bit. And sometimes it's just more
intense or it's just shooting more projectiles.
But there's a little bit of mystery and a little bit of
familiarity with the new version.
Yeah, but even those like big ones, I don't.
Maybe it's just because of the overall whimsy that's present in

(01:00:07):
Rogue Legacy that it didn't likeseem out of place, like it made
sense that they were there, you know?
And maybe Speaking of whimsy, that might be the other thing I
love about this game. This game can be brutal, but
there's just a level of juvenilesilliness and whimsy that
softens the blow but doesn't go as far as games like Castle

(01:00:27):
Crashers where it gets to like crass at times.
Yes, that's what I was going to reference to.
It's like it doesn't go that far.
This game has charm. This game has humor that I think
is still mostly in good taste. There are some of the traits
where I go. I don't know if that wording has
aged the best, but it's definitely better than.
Castle Crashers, It's just, yeah, the way the skeletons,
they look so goofy. Our disproportionately large

(01:00:50):
head are exaggerated, like deathshout when we die.
Getting traits like hypochondria, like this game is
basically putting on the face ofbeing a prankster so that you
never take defeat too seriously.And I really love that.
And I think, yeah, that might bemy overall thing actually, is
just that the personality of this game, flavor text on traits

(01:01:13):
and on your ancestors. It's just it's all so jovial
wherever there is room to do so.That is such a good point.
That's a great way to put it, too.
This game just wants to have fun.
Yeah. And even when it's punishing,
and it's really punishing in thebeginning, yes.
So it has to do a good job at onboarding you and getting you
comfortable with death in a way that makes you want to keep

(01:01:35):
playing because things will get easier.
This game does get a lot easier as you practice it, as you
understand it, as you get those permanent upgrades, you
eventually sort of steamroll through this game, and that's a
very powerful feeling. But as a new player, you don't
always know how that's going to go.
So I think the personality does a great job at keeping you
invested. I agree.

(01:01:56):
Yeah. And you know, that's that's a
great segue into the next point I have on here is that I love
how progression sort of snowballs at a certain point.
Like you can go through several characters before even being
capable of fighting the first boss.
Like even if you get there, you'll get one shot by the first
boss. But then once you are at a level

(01:02:18):
where you can beat the first boss, your next ancestor on the
next run is basically one shooting everything in the
castle. And then you move on to the
forest feeling like a badass andmaybe you get one shot by the
1st flower you find. So that one shooting stuff in
the castle is enough to make me feel like you can keep going.
And if nothing else, like at that point you can very easily

(01:02:39):
farm the castle for a several generations.
And that's a valid way to approach playing this game.
It's just like I'm on a farm fora couple generations now that I
can one shot everything in the castle.
This game rewards you for going back to the more rudimentary
areas and just systematically going through every room,
destroying all the furniture, destroying all the enemies,

(01:03:01):
farming that gold, looking for runes, looking for equipment.
It does take more time, yes, butthen you feel like you've earned
a really nice progression afterwards.
Absolutely and then all of this is still fun because the
controls in this game are hella tight and I it's hard for me to
like make this compliment, but Iwould liken this to like Mega

(01:03:24):
Man level tightness and controls.
Wow, and I wouldn't even say that about some of my favorites
like Hollow Night or iconoclastslike.
Really. Wow.
And you know, that's not to dissthose games.
Those games are they're incredible.
But it gets to the point, like in Mega Man for me, where like
the physics, the jump height, the maneuverability become
second nature. And when those controls become

(01:03:45):
second nature, I can shift my focus from keeping my eyes on my
character and platforms to keeping my eyes on the terrain
ahead. Because in my head to my hand is
already doing the inputs for where I am, so my head can focus
on where I'm going. Yeah, I think this game is such

(01:04:06):
a good feeling game that when you watch someone who's had
practice with it, they look likean even better video game player
because the game is just so naturally feeling good that
they're just almost on autopilot.
Like, didn't did you find that as you played you sort of got on
autopilot? Totally on autopilot, especially

(01:04:27):
in the castle. Yeah, definitely.
It's such a great feeling. And that's that comes down to
just like how tight the controlsare, like your jump height, your
ability to move in the air as you're falling.
It's such great controls. I think the music in this game
is really good and that's an incredible accomplishment
considering you're mostly only ever going to hear about 8 songs

(01:04:48):
like total give or take. And I, you know, I don't really
love the forest song, but otherwise, like I'm in, like I
especially love the song that's called Narwhal and that plays in
the Maya. I love that song.
It's nice. Super dope.
Yeah. I don't, I don't remember the
Forest song much. It's it's kind of ambient.
Yeah, it's more ambient. It's kind of like, it's kind of

(01:05:13):
just like classically spooky. Not my jam, but and then you
also get the option to sometimesfind a jukebox in the levels and
you can change the song if you're just like.
I kind of would rather listen toNarwhal instead of the the
castle theme. And that's another fun moment we
we find a jukebox in a castle. Yeah.

(01:05:36):
And the only reason for it to exist is to just have the option
of changing the song you're listening to.
Yeah, it's it's super dope, super, super whimsical.
There's a lot more like specifics that I could mention
here, but what it comes down to is that this game is insanely
polished in almost every way andit takes me by surprise
considering how assuming I thought it first appeared.

(01:05:57):
As far as things that I have forcomplaints, this is the obvious
one. If you're a rogue light game and
you have a finish time greater than 6.5 hours like most likely
I will consider you to be a pretty difficult Game 6. .5.
Yeah, interesting. Well, it's I'm just like, that's
a sweet spot for like games thatrequire a lot of platforming.

(01:06:18):
If you're like a story driven game, you know, maybe be into
the 2 to 4 hour range. We like the shorter games here.
We've we've not made that a secret, but this one took me
over 30 hours and they were mostly like 30 hours that I
enjoyed. But that's that's too much time
for me to. Spend on a game.
It's a lot. Yeah.
I played this for 30. I looked on Steam, I think it

(01:06:41):
was like 33 hours back in 2013. Much of that was just trying to
get those credits. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Next up, you have your spells right?
But there's that slot next to your spell where an item will be
stored after praying for a blessing at a statue during your
runs. Yeah, very mysterious.
Yeah, there's never like, a verygood description of what most of

(01:07:04):
those items do. Like, not all, but, but most.
So like, I'll get Hyperion's ring and I'm like, what is that?
Cool? At least it's not, you know, the
hedgehog's curse. But I don't know what this is
doing for me. Some of them are kind of
obvious, like Calypso's compass is obviously pointing you to
something like that. Makes it very clear but a lot of
them just leave me wondering what's going on.

(01:07:24):
Right. Certain inheritable traits are
basically non starters for me. And you know, this is not to
devalue anyone out there that might live with these traits,
but like the one where you're super skinny and will be pushed
back when taking damage. Yeah.
No, I never picked that once. Never intentionally picked that
one because I'm taking hell of hits and there's others that I

(01:07:46):
never picked either but like. There are too many rooms where
there are skinny platforms and there are spikes on the floor.
You can't risk getting pushed back.
You know you, I often get hit bythe little like enemies that
look like Ponce de Leon. Yeah, I get hit by those all the
time and. Then yeah, they go in a circle.
Yeah. So there's like sometimes based

(01:08:08):
on what your options are for picking your air, I just like, I
basically take the L before I even begin that run because some
of those trades just aren't going to cut it for me.
You know what I did? At a certain point I would look
at the traits before looking at the classes.
Oh, I did that pretty much the whole time.
Yeah, so you get 3 options of errors to choose from and it
lists the class. So that's like Hokage or

(01:08:31):
Barbarian Queen or whatever. That will largely determine your
play style and what you can do and how healthy you are and how
much magic you can use and all that stuff.
But then below that are those traits.
Some of them are more cosmetics,some of them have gameplay
implications. And I was just just scanning
that list first. Yeah, and, and for the most

(01:08:53):
part, like a lot of the times, the class made very little
difference to me. Like sometimes it'd be like, oh,
Hokage, cool, I get to go fast. Or, you know, Barbarian Queen.
It's like, nice, I'm going to have a lot of health, cool.
But like otherwise it was like arch mage and spell sword and
they were very rarely different to me because I'm mostly only
doing swinging my sword. They do have differences with

(01:09:15):
the multiplier they apply to your base stats.
Of course, yeah. So.
The way I understand it is that you have base stats that apply
to all the classes, but then theBarbarians are going to have
like multiple times the health of something like a spell sword,
and then the spell sword is going to have more magic attack
than if you use the same spell with a barbarian.

(01:09:36):
So that level of what gets multiplied, what gets divided
depending on what you choose, That was also a mystery to me
because I actually never picked Arch Mage because I liked melee
and I didn't want to go in with a disadvantage on my melee
attack. And I didn't know like is it .5
X the attack power? Like I just didn't know.

(01:09:59):
So some things I I would not pick just because I didn't know
that mystery of the multiplication or division of
the stats depending on the class.
Interesting. Yeah, a lot of the time I was
like, I've been in the place where instead of taking one hit
to defeat this enemy, it took two or three.
So I can go back to that if I have to for this run.
Yeah, usually. It's not like terrible.

(01:10:19):
It's not like, dramatically different.
Yeah, in most cases. And then maybe, and this might
be my least favorite thing aboutthe game.
It may seem like such a small thing to a lot of people, but
when you are slashing your swordand you try to change
directions, you might be stuck moving backwards and swinging
your sword in the wrong direction.

(01:10:40):
And I had a notably non 0 numberof deaths that I would have not
had if my character had simply like switched directions during
the attack to the direction I was moving.
You know what's funny about this?
There is a trait that relates tothis very thing you're talking
about. The game is aware of this.

(01:11:01):
So it's that stereoscopic one orwhatever where you can't see in
3D? No, no.
I have to look up the name one second.
I was looking this up earlier and I was like, Oh my gosh,
that's what that does. Hold on.
There's a trait called flexible and if you go to the wiki for

(01:11:21):
this game it says the hero can turn mid swing to redirect their
attack. But back to your point about
things not being explained with those prayer items, my big
complaint with things not being explained in this game largely
had to do with traits. Like I I understand that a
person in real life can be flexible, but within the

(01:11:43):
confines of Rogue Legacy, what does that mean for a character
that can swing a sword and jump?Yeah.
I just don't get it. So your your characters could be
gay. And it was just like, well, what
impact does that have on my character?
And I never understood what thatone does either.
Yeah, and some of them are purely just like cosmetic, like

(01:12:05):
the one that is that adds A sepia filter to the whole game,
you know, the reminiscent one orwhatever it is.
But then gay will actually change who greets the player as
their lover in the final cutscene according to the wiki,
but does that. But that doesn't change anything
about your adventuring, your combat ability, and I don't

(01:12:26):
think it. Should and it shouldn't.
It shouldn't. But I appreciate that this game
has this many ideas and, you know, represents that as a
trait. That's cool.
It's just also that the game doesn't explain what the
differences are. So you make these decisions,
sometimes blindly, including choosing ones that affect your.

(01:12:47):
Vision, yes, there's a there's alarge number of those too, which
is interesting, yes. But yeah, that's my the least
favorite thing is that I would several times be stuck swinging
my sword in the wrong direction while moving my body in a
different direction. That was frustrating.
And then lastly, I think costs scale way too quickly.

(01:13:11):
And on a related note too, like blueprints come way, way too
slowly. Like I had all of my rooms
before I beat the third boss, but I don't even have half of
the blueprints. In the game the blueprints are
locked behind progression at a certain point.
Like you can't get the later game blueprints without going to

(01:13:33):
the harder areas. Right, but the runes unlock
randomly because those are more on like a level playing field.
OK, yeah. Oh, and then there's upgraded
versions of every boss, and I think some of them are too hard.
But that's it. I never beat any of those
upgraded bosses back in the day.I tried them and I just I gave
up. Back in the day, I wonder, did

(01:13:54):
you beat any of this time? No, I didn't beat any of this
time. I didn't even try them because I
had those memories of them. So I was like, I just need to
get credits, so I didn't try them.
I beat the first one nice and there was I, I tried the second
one a lot and there was one playsession where I stayed on that
one for like an hour and that was a mistake and I knew it.
Was a mistake. While it was happening but I

(01:14:16):
just was like it sucked me in man.
Cuz I would get to the point where it's like, I'm so close,
you know, I would get like 3-4 hits away from beating it
multiple times. I bet you could do it.
I know, I know, I can do it withtime.
I just don't have that. So anyways, Rogue Legacy is my
big sleeper hit this season. I loved this game.

(01:14:38):
I wish it was just a little bit smaller because I truly do want
to like upgrade my damage and upgrade my health to Max, but
there's just too too much in that arena otherwise.
This was a surprising delight toplay, and I would play more of
it if I had the time. I'm not quite as drawn to it as
I was like inscription or Casey's mod, but I am bummed

(01:15:00):
that I don't have time for more.And I had a score in mind when I
started my notes and based on where I put it in my backlog
list. But when I was writing about
controls, I decided to boost it to a 9.5 out of 10.
Amazing, dude. That's amazing.
I love that you love this so much.
I'm glad that it turned from a game that you were kind of

(01:15:20):
dreading into one that you love.That's Grace.
I love that. Now I have to report that back
when I played this 2013, you know, I hadn't played as many
indie games back then. I was but a fledgling indie game
fan. You.
Didn't you didn't know this about yourself yet?
You were a closeted indie. Game I didn't know I would start
a podcast with you one day covering indie games, right.

(01:15:43):
So back then I loved this. I got so obsessed with this,
played for 33 hours, didn't feelthe time pass right.
My memory of it is that those 33hours were just gold, you know,
like literally I was picking up gold, but like no, no crap,
right, no fat all lean right, really fun.

(01:16:03):
And so over the years as I played more indie games, that
memory was rose colored and and now I don't want you to think
I'm going to a place where like I disliked this game.
I still really like it a lot, but over the years as I made my
top 100 indie games list, it wasin my top 10 for a long time and

(01:16:24):
it actually still is in the top ten.
I just haven't adjusted where itshould go yet.
Oh. OK, I was.
That's what I was like. Looks exactly the same to me.
Yeah. So I haven't had a chance to
adjust it. I need to figure that out.
But going into this knowing thatit's now 12 years old, I was
thinking, oh, this is probably aged really well in a lot of
ways, but I wonder how I'll enjoy it this time.

(01:16:47):
Like it's a replay and I've played so many games since, what
am I going to think? And overall, this game is still
addicting. I think of the Pee Wee Herman
PSA where he goes. Have you seen the one about
crack cocaine? It's APSA of Pee Wee Herman

(01:17:08):
sitting in a room silhouetted. You don't even know it's Pee Wee
Herman sitting there. And then the lights come up.
He's in this Gray room, and he'scompletely dead serious.
But it's Pee Wee Herman, and he holds up a vial of crack
cocaine. He goes, this is crack rock
cocaine. It's one of the most addictive
substances on earth. And this game is crack.

(01:17:31):
Like this game is so addicting. I can play this for so many
hours and not feel the time pass.
I think this game feels so good to control.
Like you said the handling is tight, jumping feels really
powerful. Just your base jump is
incredible. The swings are so fast when you
use magic, like if you think of throwing knives or deploying a

(01:17:56):
an axe or whatever, it's always like super fast and reactive to
your button presses. I love the look of numbers going
up, you know like your gold justgoing up and up and up as you're
collecting it and also your stats going up as you upgrade.
Every run feels like you're advancing, even if it's the
smallest advancement. Like I can't think of a run

(01:18:18):
maybe other than when I had to make a choice between like 3
really bad choices of a class I didn't want to play as and I
didn't get very far. Maybe I intentionally played
poorly so that I would die sooner so I can get to a better
class. Some of those I didn't make a
lot of advancing, but many, like95% of my runs, I am at least

(01:18:39):
getting enough gold where I can fund an upgrade in my skill
tree. So I'm always getting better.
You're always feeling that advancement.
Or maybe you'll find a new rune that you unlock or a new piece
of gear. So all that's happening
constantly. I like the variety of enemies
and bosses. You know, sometimes it's just a
different color and it's a bigger version of something

(01:19:00):
you've seen before. But overall, when you look at
the credits of this game, it does the Super Mario World thing
where it shows you the the cast.Of.
Characters. I love when games do that.
And I love that song too, by theway, in the credits that just
shows you the variety there, just screen after screen after
screen of all the different enemies.

(01:19:21):
I also really like the clever traits.
You know, we said that the traits sometimes are poorly
explained, but you know, just somany cool ideas are going on,
even if they don't affect the gameplay a ton.
Like if you get the muscle spasmone, it will cause the
controller to vibrate randomly. And I didn't realize that that's

(01:19:41):
what was happening until I was streaming this.
And I went to go for a BRB and Ileft the game up and I set my
controller on the desk and the controller is vibrating.
And I'm like, why is that happening?
Is it because I'm sitting outside the castle and it's
raining and there's Thunder? And no, that's not why it's
happening. It's because I have that trait.

(01:20:03):
Dementia causes hallucinatory enemies to appear, which I do
find annoying. I never picked that trait.
Yeah, there's like a 20% chance that walking into a room will
spawn an enemy that does attack you, but it doesn't actually do
damage to you and you can't do damage to it.
So it's like a decoy. You look at it and you can't

(01:20:23):
tell that it's fake and you try attacking it and your sword just
goes right through it. It doesn't attack the enemy and
the enemy can't hurt you. It's just a distraction.
That's. That's like a fun little that's
they're just having so much. Fun.
They're having so much fun. It's so creative with the traits
and also the peripheral arterialdisease which causes no foot

(01:20:44):
pulse. That's one of my favorites.
One of my favorites. I didn't know what it did for
the longest time, but this makesit so that you won't set off
floor traps as you run over them.
I really love the charm of the game.
You know, the Faro Deuce and thethe humor that comes along with
a lot of the trades. It gives this game a feeling of
lightheartedness and it keeps mewanting to play.

(01:21:07):
It's like someone's like sittingin next to you seeing you fail
and they're just reminding you like, hey, it's not a big deal,
just play again. You know, that's that's kind of
what the charm feels like in this game.
Steamrolling the game when you get overpowered, especially as
just like a really beefy barbarian or something like that
feels so good. You can just like run through a

(01:21:27):
room without stopping, mashing your attack button and you're
just doing one swing to kill most things in the castle at a
certain point and maybe you do another sweep through to collect
all the golds that fell from allthe enemies.
I just love that feeling in thisgame.
I don't know that this is the most aesthetically advanced

(01:21:51):
game. I'll say like, I'm not saying
it's ugly, but it has a very approachable and simple and
straightforward aesthetic. All the enemies stand out.
You understand what things mean.The the mystery comes in like
what happens when you select a certain item or skill or trade
sometimes, but the actual look of the game and what you were

(01:22:12):
doing and the enemies, all of that just makes sense right off
jump. When I get to things I don't
like about Rogue Legacy, I thinkmy lists here in 2025 is longer
than it would be back in 2013 when I first played.
The repetition and the grinding involved to make progress can

(01:22:32):
sometimes feel like a slog. You are in the castle, and by
the castle I mean the first areaof the castle, which is referred
to as the castle. You're in that place a lot, so
you see a lot of the same sort of areas.
And this is ultimately a game about farming golds.
And I might try boss and it's too hard.

(01:22:56):
And I know that I have to get better armor.
I have to increase my critical damage chance and power and
maybe a few other things. And I know that, like you said,
the upgrades get really expensive fast.
I know that that's going to meanthat I have to farm quite a bit,
and there is a satisfaction in seeing that advancement all the

(01:23:16):
same. But I think this game asks you
to grind a lot. It becomes less about the
randomization and the rogue light aspects and what's what am
I going to roll this run? At a certain point you get so
good at it that you can you can do the farming.
It's just about investing the time and that's a lot of time.

(01:23:39):
We both spent a lot of time in this game to prepare for this
episode. I don't know that a game like
this with this personality and this level of ambition demands
that scale of like just time investment.
Also, one thing I noticed this time around way more in 2025 is
that rooms can be very cheap. Some rooms will generate and

(01:24:03):
when you go in them there's an enemy that attacks you with less
than 1/4 second after you enter.And so like sometimes it feels
like you can't react. You go in a room and there's no
buffer time for the enemy to notice you and then attack you.
It's just like the enemy alreadyknew you were coming in there
and it's shooting something at you the moment you're entering.
And so you always are on edge inplaces like the Maya and Land of

(01:24:25):
Darkness, especially where it gets harder.
I had AI had a unique experienceand it only happened one time,
but I, I was exploring downward in the castle and fell into the
land of darkness, which I was like, you know, no big deal, I'm
going to leave right away. But it was like this spike pit,
just like this straight down pitwith spikes at the bottom, no

(01:24:49):
platforms to jump on. And so I just, I had to take the
death there. You had to, yeah.
There's nothing to save you there.
So that's just going to go alongwith a game with tons of
randomization. There's going to be that
unfortunate pairing of like entrance and the second room
you're going into. It's just I noticed that there's

(01:25:09):
sometimes, especially with enemies, just not that that
buffer time. And this is similar to comments
we've made about other games such as Colt of the Lamb.
Like in that game sometimes there would be a super tiny room
generated but like 12 enemies inthat supertown.
They all have projectiles. And so that doesn't feel very
fair, and that can happen in this game too.
So I think the RNG can just place too many dangers in one

(01:25:31):
spot with sometimes not enough of a reward for tackling them.
I think this game is missing outon some logic at a certain point
of here's how much danger there should be for this reward, or we
have this much danger, let's really reward the player for
that. You do get rewarded for really
tough rooms, but there are some rooms that just give you nothing

(01:25:54):
after a pretty tough battle, andmaybe it's something that takes
away a lot of your HP and kind of ruins your run.
Your chosen loadout of runes andspells also have no bearing on
things like fairy chests. There are fairy chests that give
you runes and they often requireyou to have a very specific

(01:26:14):
skill to get to them. It'll say kill all the enemies
in this room to get this chest, but the enemies are behind a
wall and you need the the shock room spell to be able to crows
or the crows. And I get the sense there's
nothing about the game reading my loadout and thinking we're

(01:26:34):
going to give him more challenges and upgrades and
runes and fairy chests that cater to what this player has
chosen. It's just randomly distributing
everything. And that's unfortunate because
that's out of my control. I just have to wait for the
right luck to show up. And that's, that's just weird.
It's a weird thing that this game is.

(01:26:57):
It sometimes feels like my runs are clogged with these rooms
that tell me to do something andI can't.
And it for some players that arenew, they might run into these
rooms and they might go. Well, it must be possible.
It must be possible, but like, could it be possible with what I
have? Or am I supposed to come back?
Like is there something I don't get about the mechanics?

(01:27:18):
It's just weird and I think it'sjust an oversight.
I think it's something that justback then, maybe the game design
wasn't quite where it's at, or there's weren't as many games to
be inspired by that had this idea, so they didn't even think
about it. Or maybe they knew about it and
they just couldn't address it atthe time.
Also, things like the damn clownchallenges.

(01:27:42):
We have to throw the knives at the targets.
They're just there are situational rooms that are just
weirdly way too advanced I think.
Can I can I mention something that I noticed about the the
pick one of three treasure chests?
Oh, sure. One time and I didn't notice
until it was too late, I was wearing their nerdy glasses and

(01:28:04):
you can see when you have the nerdy glasses it changes the
color of the perfect chest. That's cool.
Yeah, I love that. Yeah.
There are lots of little toucheslike that, too, I think.
I don't think we can shout that out enough.
This game has lots of little situational moments like that
that some players might never encounter.
Right. And that's really genius for

(01:28:26):
especially for a game that came out in 2013.
But anyways. But back to your clown.
Point. But yeah, the damn clown rooms.
You, the one where you throw theaxes can be aced every time if
you know where to stand, but theones where you like, throw the
daggers at the targets? It's way too hard for what it
is. Yeah, and I, I agree.

(01:28:46):
Like I think the threshold for abigger payout needs to be a
little bit lower because like I find a lot of satisfaction,
especially when I'm getting to like the 5th target and I hit
the 5th target, I'm like, hell yeah, look at me go I'm the
boss. But if you hit the 5th target,
you've only collected 593, like 1500 gold.

(01:29:11):
Or is it? I think it's less.
It's 150 gold, which is nothing.It's not even close to like what
you get from the target game forthe same for way less effort
actually. I know.
So just like those two instancesof the two games are giving you
very different levels of reward for effort, but I'm not even
caring about the gold at that point.

(01:29:32):
I want the treasure chest that you get for destroying all the
targets and I've never been ableto do that in the knife throwing
game. I've never gotten that chest is
that's what I care about is the thing that gives me an upgrade
and I just can't get it that way.
So I see that room, I see that it's a knife throwing challenge
and I go, well, I'm not getting this.
I'll get some extra gold, I guess.
Yeah, that's all it is for. And then again, the traits are

(01:29:56):
poorly explains and effects are sometimes not apparent even
after selecting them. I've done runs where I pick a
character. It has a trait I don't
recognize. I don't even see the inherent
like change that it's making, ifit even has one.
And so some things I have to look up.
There are things like the prayeritems, too, that I just don't

(01:30:17):
understand unless I look up the wiki.
And then I think the story is, you know, it doesn't need to be
in your face, doesn't have to bea a big ambitious narrative, but
for what it is like, it's a little bit too spaced out for me
to care about it. We get some journal entries
throughout the game and that adds some flavor, but again, a

(01:30:39):
lot of it is at the beginning and the very end and I just.
I think I I. Don't get a lot.
Of collected my final journal entry right after I beat the
second boss and so like that's awhole 50% of game where I'm not
getting any journal entries at all.
Yeah, so you just have this longstretch of time where it's
really only about the gameplay, and that's fine.

(01:31:01):
But overall, Rogue Legacy I think has no doubt left a
legacy. Looking back, some decisions it
makes do feel like oversights and it can be pretty grindy, but
it maintains the fun of randomization and feeling
yourself getting better with every run.
It has a very clever system of trades, equipment, and upgrades

(01:31:23):
once you understand everything. I back in the day would have
given this a 10 out of 10 Disco Cola.
I'm going to give this with my 2025 mind.
And 2020. 5 glasses on my 2025 nerdy glasses on.
I'm gonna give it an 8.5. Wow, does that sound fair.

(01:31:44):
That's quite a reduction. It is quite a reduction, but
this will no doubt still remain in my top 100 indie games list.
Oh, I have no doubt about that. Yeah, and I have not played
Rogue Legacy 2. Have you looked up anything
about Rogue Legacy 2? If you looked up any videos?
Only on accident because I was trying to see what I assumed was
the true ending of Rogue Legacy One.

(01:32:04):
Turns out there is not really a true ending.
You just get a harder version ofthe last boss.
That's what it is, but the art style pops in a different way
and also also just happened. The physical version just
happened to come in stock at VGPVideo Games Plus, which I

(01:32:25):
believe is a like a Canadian GameStop basically.
OK, so if I wanted the physical for Rogue Legacy 2, I could get
it there and it's on sale, right?
Now, yeah, it's definitely like a lot more modern looking.
I think there is more flexibility in how the classes
differ gameplay wise. I've looked a little bit into it
through reviews, but I haven't played it myself.

(01:32:45):
It released in 2022 and. That's so recent.
Very recent, yeah. So like 9 years after this camp,
you know, isn't that wild? And I know that it, Rogue Legacy
2 is really popular, so I'd, I'dlike to add it to our featured
game potentials list, if that's works.
OK. I'll I'll get that physical copy
before it's too late. Then yeah.

(01:33:06):
So we will hopefully review thatsomeday.
And you know, you mentioned the vampirism, that being something
you ran to in this game. I am curious what other skills,
trades, equipment, runes affected your approach to the
game the most. Well obviously any good
platformer should have a double jump unlock or at least a

(01:33:27):
character that specializes in double jump.
So I had a double jump. I never went so far as to do a
triple jump because your your rune equips are precious.
So I had a double jump and I hadan air dash.
There is a like an upgraded version of a boss that gives you
like 3 air dashes and I thought about like going hard on air

(01:33:50):
dashes an. Upgraded version of a boss.
So like each boss has an upgraded version, right?
Oh, I see. And when you fight that boss,
your character is pre. That's right, yes.
Yes. Yes, and one of them had like 3
dashes and I was like this is this feels great, Yeah.
So I thought about that. This feels.
Great. But mostly I and we talked about

(01:34:12):
grinding and how grinding is usually not worth the reward.
So early on once I unlocked the part of the manner that says
like increase gold drops or whatever, I went hard on
upgrading that before pretty much anything else.
And so like that translates overto runes and a couple of armor

(01:34:32):
pieces where I would like boost gold drops.
So double jump, air dash, gold drops, vampirism, that was
pretty much it. Yeah, I was obsessed with gold
finds. So in Manor, in the Manor tree
in the lower right, there's a permanent gold increase that you

(01:34:52):
can fund and it gets kind of expensive, but there are only 5
levels to it. I'd say that is necessary to get
like worth it. That's going to dramatically cut
down your overall play time. It's going to make the game more
fun because you're going to be able to buy more things sooner,
thus making the game just like making you more overpowered
sooner. But then also I would switch

(01:35:13):
between a really melee focus character like a barbarian king
and the miner which will let yousee treasure chest and also
boost the gold you find. They're more of a squishy
character, but that's a great way to farm gold if you're sort
of stuck and you need to buy something expensive.
How will I do a run where I get to keep enough gold to buy

(01:35:35):
something that I need? I was.
I was switching between those two a lot.
So when you're switching betweenthose two, are you changing like
your loadout a lot? Because for me and I, this has
become more and more obvious as we've played more games.
For Underplayed, I don't like tochange my loadout.
I like to find something that works in all situations so I

(01:35:57):
don't have to do all those button presses.
So that's I guess another reasonI stuck with vampirism so much
is that it's just like an all around useful trait if you're
someone that likes to hit enemies.
So I know that I should have like changed loadouts more often
than I did, but but how about you?
What did you? Do largely I didn't change the

(01:36:18):
loadouts a lot, I would change one or two runes so and it
depended on what runes I had unlocked as well.
You unlock them in a random order.
Every player is going to have a different order.
Actually, this is cool. This is like that statistic
you've heard about playing card decks, where if you shuffle a
deck of playing cards right out-of-the-box, it's very likely

(01:36:39):
you'll have a configuration thathas never existed on Earth
before because of the number of variables with how randomly the
runes unlock, the order that youunlock them is unique to you,
and my order is unique to me. So sometimes I wouldn't have
gold finds, but I might have it on like one piece of gear and I
would keep it on that gear for along time.

(01:37:01):
I might change things here or there.
I might change a piece of equipment to boost the gold find
on the miner or something. But largely I did try to keep
things in place because like you, I liked having vampiric
runes. I tried to have two of those and
then I generally had one gold find rune, one extra jump rune,
and one dash room. I liked the movement, the

(01:37:22):
maneuverability of the extra jump in the dash.
I don't think you need more though.
Yeah, I think the the dungeons designs to have the right layout
of platforms that you can get around just fine with that
configuration. It's nice.
And there are some specific, very specific rooms that will
generate that are like if you have one extra jump or if you
have Hermes sandals and you jumpextra high, like you get up to a

(01:37:46):
special platform that can't be reached any other way.
But yeah, I found that you only needed the one extra jump and
dash was very necessary. There are a lot of deaths that I
probably would have had had I not been able to like, dash away
from a projectile really fast. And I complained about some
fairy chest just being inherently inaccessible for a

(01:38:08):
lot of loadouts. But there are fairy chest where
it says get to this fairy chest without jumping or get to this
fairy chest without looking at it.
Yeah, those are hard. You need just one dash to get
those, and so having that dash keeps you alive.
It also helps you find more upgrades.
I was also constantly upgrading my equipment weight maximum to

(01:38:31):
allow for better armor. Yeah, I'd say that's really
important. I did that to a point.
Once I got to the point where I had again 4 vampiric pieces and
one of the ones that increases the gold value, I kind of
stopped caring about it for. For a while.
Because I was like, well, what could get better than this?

(01:38:52):
Probably not a lot. There is a lot of really good
armor. There is, I know.
I found once I was like OK I need to beat bosses now.
I was like started looking at other armor.
Totally. And then other things that I was
just buying back and forth, I was going between these two
things a lot. Extra critical chance and

(01:39:13):
critical damage I thought were very necessary if you wanted to
just stick with someone who doesa lot of damage in a short
amount of time, minimizing the amount of damage you take.
So it's an example of like, being offensive is actually
defensive because you're killingthings.
Faster, right? I didn't like look at how much

(01:39:33):
that changed things for me, but I had a suspicion in my mind I
was like, I bet that focusing oncrit chance and damage is
probably a good investment. So I also put a decent amount of
focus into that. Yeah, because I think every
level of the chance gives you another 2% chance of procking at
a critical, which adds up. That's huge.

(01:39:55):
And then for traits, I was goingfor things like hyper gonadism,
which improves your knock back, which works on things like the
final boss even like that'll knock back the final boss and
make him give him a harder time approaching you And then.
This is where I'm not sure this is aged the best.

(01:40:16):
I don't know what this is sayingabout ADHD, but ADHD makes you
move faster, 30% faster. It's like, OK, that's that's
fun. It's fun.
What is that saying about ADHD? I just I.
There was, yeah, a certain misunderstanding about all that
ADH to how ADHD can present itself.
Yeah, I feel like if if ADHD were implemented more correctly

(01:40:41):
in this game made this year, it might look more like some of the
other traits. Yeah, it might be like there's
something tempting about a room,but then something about another
room tempts you and you want to go to that room instead.
That would be more accurate, ButI digress.
Yeah, I didn't. I mean, yes, I looked at traits

(01:41:02):
first and at the, I guess I would say I wasn't going for any
particular traits necessarily, but ones that I would get
excited that I had were ADHD because I like to move fast.
So if you're in ADHD, Hokage. Oh my gosh, you're.
Sometimes you're moving too fast.
Too fast, Like you need to move toward enemies to hit them, but

(01:41:24):
at that speed you have no practice for how fast that is
and you actually throw yourself into spikes a lot.
Yeah, like there's and again, this goes back to how good the
controls are. You can swing and kill like a
Candlestick, and the default speed at which you go you will
catch the gold as you're walkingfrom destroying that.

(01:41:44):
But if you're in ADHD Hokage, you're missing that gold, and
then you accidentally leave the room and then that gold's gone.
That's what I should have calledyou at the top of the episode.
I'm doing just fine, my ADHD hokage.
But I would get excited for that.
And it took a while, but I did get excited for PAD peripheral
arterial disease, and that's especially helpful in like one

(01:42:07):
of the bosses, I can't remember which one.
The land of darkness one the slime guy cuz they have they
have spikes on the floor. Yeah, that's the only reason I
was able to like, I think ultimately defeat that.
One, that's a good point. What else?
I mean, those two were were my biggest ones.
It was mostly about the ones I was avoiding.

(01:42:28):
Yeah, totally. It informs my decision.
First and foremost is the ones that I don't want.
Yeah, that filters things out, and then I select from there.
When we look at the four areas, I think it's interesting to note
what makes them each special anddifferent and stand out.
There's the castle, there's the forest, there's the Maya,

(01:42:48):
there's the Land of Darkness. Ideally, that's the order you
approach them. So it goes like difficulty one
through 4 in that order, and thegame tells you that on a little
map in. There.
Which I I liked. I don't actually.
I didn't remember that from, youknow, 12 years ago that it, that
the game sort of instructed you in that way.

(01:43:09):
But I, I like that generally theformula of the layout is
predictable. Like go to the South, that's
Land of Darkness, go to the east, that's the forest.
Go to the north, that's the Maya.
But when you think about all these areas, does anything stand
out about any of them? Well, I think they all have a
very distinct identity and a lotof it comes down to visuals, of

(01:43:30):
course. But like the Maya might have a
lot of really tall vertical rooms with a lot of like the
semi solid platforms, whereas the forest isn't going to have
as many of those. They're going to have the really
wide rooms because it's far to the east and it, you know,
there's not, you're not buildingup, you're building to the

(01:43:52):
right. But otherwise, you know, I think
a lot of it comes down to what you might expect as far as which
enemies are difficult, even whatcolor choices they kind of make.
So like some of the Knights thatyou see in the castle when you
get to Land of Darkness, they'relike colored red.
And that's to show that they're the harder version.

(01:44:14):
But also it's the Land of Darkness, so they're red.
Yeah, even though it's really dark in there, like things
generally are just that color, so they fit.
And like the forest will have a higher number of the floaty
magical characters of multiple types of multiple like elemental
types, but that's going to have things that kind of make sense

(01:44:36):
in the forest. It's like, oh, there's these
druity spirity type people and they would be in the forest as
opposed to. The.
The tall tower at the top of thecastle.
And then usually the common enemies you find in all the
areas, they are on average more symbolic of that area's boss,
which makes sense too. I think the bosses have an

(01:45:00):
unpredictable difficulty level based on the order you're
ideally supposed to face them. So like when you think of the
castle being the first area, you'd think that boss, the big
eyeball, would be the easiest. In my opinion the order of
difficulty from easiest to hardest is completely like

(01:45:21):
remixed from the intended order of the areas.
So in my opinion the boss difficulty from easiest to
hardest would be the one in the forest.
So Alexander, I think that one'sthe easiest but close second is
the big eyeball in the castle and then third would be the land
of darkness which is the big slime that splits apart a lot.

(01:45:43):
It's still hard but I think the one from the Maya which is Ponce
de Leon is the hardest in a lot of ways.
Once you find out a good Strat for him he gets a lot easier,
but the difficulty went 2143 forme.
Interesting, that's how I saw them.
I I mean I think the at least the HP for each boss is scaled

(01:46:09):
accordingly as to what it shouldbe.
Oh OK, but as far as like dodging attacks like I had the
least amount of trouble with theone in the land of darkness
actually because I find the slimes very easy to avoid for
the most part. And sure, it's spawning the
floaty magic dudes, but. As long as you.

(01:46:29):
If you have. Like up with attacking them,
You're fine, you just have to manage it.
But, you know, and that's where it's like, sure, it's the
easiest for me to dodge comparedto the eyeball who's shooting a
lot of projectiles at you. But the HP of, like, the floaty
magic dudes that come out is going to be too substantial for
me to, like, go there first, even if I avoid all the enemies

(01:46:52):
along the way. Yeah.
On the castle, the place you seethe most, one praise I can give
to it is that it's also the place that felt like it had the
most diversity was just sheer number of rooms.
They all look like they're they have the same aesthetic,
obviously, so you're kind of looking at the same general

(01:47:13):
look. But I was finding new rooms in
the castle for many hours after starting.
I would be like 12 hours into the game and I would go into a
room and I'd be like, I haven't seen this yet.
This is in the opening area. That's wild.
So it's possible they have a greater pool of rooms to draw

(01:47:34):
from. I'm thinking of blueprints now
for the for that castle section,just the first section.
So I was impressed by that. And I guess that kind of leads
into our last topic, which is, given the age of the game, what
rogue light ideas were ahead of their time, What was impressive
for 2013? And what do you think maybe was

(01:47:56):
a good like starting point, but that has been improved with
other games you've played sort of in this genre world?
So I think, and since you're talking about getting a larger
pool of rooms, I think it reallyis impressive that it is
randomly generated. But it randomly generates in a
way that A you get rooms that you've seen before, like there

(01:48:18):
are like a set of predetermined room builds, but B that it
arranges itself in a way that there are no dead end doorways.
You know, like no matter what itarranges itself in a way that
the semi solid platform that goes down will lead to something
every time and. It's not like because of what

(01:48:41):
randomly generated next to it that will be shut off like it's
always. It's randomly generating next to
something that is appropriate for it to sit up against.
Yeah, I those problems don't really arise.
And there are the warp pads thatmake it really easy to maneuver
around. I was doing that a lot close to
the end of the game too. It's hard because until like

(01:49:03):
this episode, I've still been ofthe mentality that I don't like
rogue lights. I think I do.
I think I actually do. So I don't know.
I think the one thing that this does that is absent from most
other rogue lights I've played safer.
Maybe Slay the Spire is discipline.
This game is massive and it it feels like it could be

(01:49:27):
completed, but I know, I just know looking at it, it's a time
commitment. Other Rogue lights I've played,
like even Iris and the Giant. I still have a long way to go to
complete my card collection, butit's going to take half the time
that it would take to complete Rogue Legacy.
Well the other thing is that youcould argue that there might not

(01:49:48):
be an end to this because in newgame plus which becomes really
fun and what I got sucked into 12 years ago, you can keep
finding chess that upgrade your stats permanently.
So you know those chess you openafter a boss will give you like
3 random trade upgrades? You can find those more
commonly. I remember just it's a snowball

(01:50:10):
effects again. It's it's you're finding more
and more attack power, more magic attack power, more
defense, and then you can just survive more things and you keep
going and going and going. OK, So those are permanent.
I I was, yeah, yeah. Those persist.
So is this extra health just on this run or will I have that
extra health in the next one too?

(01:50:32):
Yeah, those I believe are are permanent across all runs, which
is really exciting to me. I love you.
Know I agree well and it's because you that's what you get
in fairy chests after you've collected all the runes like if
you have all the runes, yes, that's what it switches to.
Yes. And so you're finding tons of
those constantly. Yeah, and the ability to freeze
the castle with the architects. That was really cool.

(01:50:55):
That is very clever. It's clever because it is a very
easy way to just grind on a boss.
You can warp right to a boss. If you lock down the castle, it
will look exactly like your previous run, including chest
that you opened will remain openand you can't open them again,
but enemies will respond. You could farm gold from

(01:51:16):
enemies, but really you want to do this to get back to a spot
that you found by uncovering themap.
And so that really cuts down your play time when you know
you're powerful enough to beat Ponce de Leon, you just need to
kind of attempt him 5 to 10 times.
So I appreciated that a lot. The the world record holder for

(01:51:37):
speedrun makes obvious use of OH.
I bet, I bet yes. And then for things that have
improved in a lot of games since, you know, other than the
fairy chest example and you know, finding those permanent
upgrades in Rogue Legacy, you don't really get better during
your runs. You go in with your stats, your

(01:52:00):
class, your traits, your equipment, all that stuff.
And that's just like how good you'll be.
And then all that changes is maybe you pick up a different
spell and maybe you'll lose health and then you'll heal
health, but your stats don't change during the runs.
And in a lot of rogue likes and rogue lights, we find that our
stats adapt as we make choices during the run, and that can

(01:52:21):
make things more interesting sometimes because you're making
a decision like in the heat of battle.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
Yeah, so that's something that'schanged in a lot of these games.
Do I think that has to happen ina modern Rogue light?
Not necessarily, but I think it makes things interesting.
And then the fidelity and visualflare, just how this game looks.
If you look at Rogue Legacy 2, Ithink Rogue Legacy 2 looks a lot

(01:52:42):
better. It's multitudes better looking I
think, in my opinion, but that'ssubjective.
Anything else to say about RogueLegacy?
I don't think I have anything else.
I'm so glad that it was a very pleasant surprise for you.
Yeah, I really loved it. Like, man, even last night I
was, I I was writing my notes and I was like, OK, I need to do

(01:53:05):
this joke for Bopo's intro. I need to go look at some of the
words that they use. And then I ended up just playing
a a run or two of that before moving on to blueprints anyway.
Love it. Well, I'm so glad that it held
up for me and that it ended up being such a pleasant surprise
for you. That is our review of Rogue
Legacy. You can play it on and get ready

(01:53:28):
for this list. PC, Mac, Linux, Switch, PS3,
PS4, PS Vita, Xbox One and iOS Disco Cola rated it a 9.5.
I rated it an 8.5. That's the end of this episode
of Underplayed. You can find more of our
episodes at kzum.org/underplayedand on common podcast platforms

(01:53:49):
like Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Our music was composed by Jack
Rodenberg. Our art comes from Oni Mochi.
You can check out our show noteswhere you can find and follow us
across social media. Underplayed is on Blue Sky,
Instagram and Threads. You can also find my links down
below and I stream a variety of indie games on.
Twitch and I am at Disco Cola ina lot of those places, not

(01:54:13):
streaming too too much but doingwhat I can when I can.
And hey, if you can support yourlocal public and community radio
stations, they could really use the help.
Yes, they can. Next time we'll have two more
secret games to review, a discussion with Kara from Patch
magazine, and our featured game will be Blueprints, a puzzle

(01:54:36):
adventure developed by Doguvom. Until then, everyone keep on
playing.

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081 - Iris and the Giant, Assemble With Care, & Rogue Legacy

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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;}081 - Iris and the Giant, Assemble With Care, & Rogue Legacy