083 - Elsie, Gemporium, & Moonlighter - Underplayed

Episode Transcript
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(00:06):
Thank you for pressing start on episode 83 of Underplayed,
Kzum's indie video game podcasts.
Today we have two secret games, followed by a review of our
featured game Moonlighter. 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 obto your IB in a
cooperative game. He runs like a pony.
He loves pepperoni. It's the one and only Disco

(00:51):
Cola. What's going on?
You know, Bo PO, I'm not as tired as I should be, but
apparently I don't need to sleepto get by.
How are you? You actually do better when you
don't sleep. I'm doing just fine.
My carnivorous MU tie. Those are references to our
featured game Moonlighter. I thought of this joke seconds
before hitting record, but I just wanted to say Moonlighter.

(01:14):
Hardly know her, for what it's worth.
AO got him. Since this is our jokey part at
the top, yeah, Moonlighter is a game that I think recently
celebrated its 7th birthday, andit's got a sequel coming out
this year. I think it's coming out in Early
Access first, which is interesting, and I'm looking

(01:37):
forward to talking about this game that seems like it's one of
the earlier featured games of the season, one that a lot of
people have played and one that I've heard about for years and
I've never played it before the last few weeks.
Yeah, I remember, I don't know if it was right when it came out
or shortly after, but I rememberwhen the the physical was

(01:59):
getting a release and I was like, oh buddy, look at this
game. This looks so dope.
And I've been I've been wanting to play it for quite some time,
but like, you know, at my feet weren't burning to like get
started. It was like that would be cool
to play but I just don't have the time.
I think I kind of felt the same way, like I'm, I'm eager to play
it, I'm not itching to play it, but it seemed like a really good

(02:20):
time to feature it. For the show and it dropped in A
at a time when I was like, Oh no, I hate rogue lights and I'm
I'm no longer that person. Yeah, yeah.
And this is actually a streak now this season where this is
our third game in a row that hasrogue light elements at least.
So we didn't really plan that. It just kind of happens but.

(02:42):
Most of the games are other genres first before that.
Yeah, they're all quite dissimilar on their own, but
still an interesting trend this season with our picks.
The featured game next episode will be very different.
It won't have rogue light elements.
It's going to be 1000 times resist.
And I wanted to mention this because we will have a guest for

(03:03):
that episode. It will be Lucy Blundell of game
developer Ken Moku. Lucy is the developer behind One
Night Stand and Video Verse, which is a game that I played
and reviewed for last season. And we'll talk to Lucy about her
game development journey. And also we will review 1000

(03:24):
Times Resist alongside Lucy. So look out for that next
episode, which will be episode 84.
We like to give those heads up about the guest appearances.
Disco Cola another thing I wanted to mention.
Let's hear it, Silk. Song is out.
Yeah, Silk Song is out. A very interesting string of

(03:48):
events happened in about 72 hours, and it began with our
previous episode. Do you want to?
We were talking. To Kara, she had mentioned that
she would love to interview TeamCherry.
So that's the context. And then I took that as an
opportunity to be a big old sourpuss about, well, not a sour

(04:08):
puss. I'm not sour about it but like a
wet blanket for all the the highhopers.
A little bit of a pessimist. Yeah, I wanted to bring them
down to my level. Like Silk Song's not coming out
and then it it is. And they didn't shadow drop it
either, so I was wrong twice. And when I learned the news just
days later that Silksong was coming out September 4th, it's

(04:32):
not like I was feeling like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I told you. I told you that Silksong's
coming out. I wasn't feeling that way.
Honestly, it just felt like thatpodcast magic.
Yeah, I think we manifested. This we.
Manifested this. Crab DLC.

(04:54):
Yes, Cortana Zero DLC, It just keeps happening.
We mentioned something, we're not sure if it's coming out or
even if it if there's a possibility that something like
that exists. And then sometimes a few months
later, sometimes a few weeks later, sometimes a few days
later. I think one time the next day it
happened. Yeah, it's wild.

(05:15):
So that's why that's really the reason why we do this podcast.
If this podcast didn't exist, nonew games or sequels or DLC
would ever be announced. So that's really the secret
mission of this podcast. As a side note, there's never
going to be a Mega Man X9. Never going to happen.

(05:35):
Not Indies, so it won't actuallymanifest.
Shut up. You'll have to start a Mega Man
podcast for that to count. I won't do it.
I won't do it. What if we talk about that with
proto dude? And then it happens.
A few episodes. I feel like he would know
though. He would.
He would already know. That's true.
Maybe, I don't know, they changed the leadership of of

(05:55):
like the the Mega Man team. So maybe, maybe not.
Maybe we would manifest it, proto dude would still learn
about it before us, but we're still the reason what's
happening. OK, I'll I'll send him this
episode and get him on board. But anyway, Silk song is out.
What are your feelings on it besides being wrong about it

(06:18):
coming out? This.
I'm happy to be wrong. First of all, yeah, second of
all, I think the timing is bad. Just personally because I have
to play 1000 times resist reallyquickly.
Yeah, and that's not a short game.
It's not like a super long game,but that's one where you have to
pay attention and take your time, I think.
And yeah, I'm excited for Silk Song quite a lot.

(06:41):
I also don't exactly know when I'll play it.
Yeah, I think I'll probably turnit on the night of launch just
because you you have to. To be part of the moment.
Yeah, but like I'll have to put it down pretty much right away.
Yeah, yeah, I hear you on that. And it's got over I think around
40 bosses. It's got 200 different enemies.

(07:01):
It's going to probably be comparable at least to the size
of the original. I've heard that it's it's
supposed to be shorter is what I've heard actually.
I do welcome that. I I do welcome that.
Even if it was considerably a bit shorter, like if it was
2030% shorter, I wouldn't mind that honestly.
Yeah, because even like my best run of Hollow Knight, which I've

(07:24):
played multiple Times Now, is like 25 hours.
Maybe that's still a long time, and that's after having played
it. I think I spent 50 hours in that
game just doing as much as I could.
But yeah, we're excited that will be a featured game at some
point. And yeah, I think that's all for
the top of the episode segment. So we're going to move on to

(07:47):
Secret Games. But before we do, there are a
few very easy ways to support Underplayed.
They cost nothing and they take almost no time at all.
So we would really appreciate you doing these things for us if
you haven't already. One, give us a follow and a five
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Podcasts. That will make us appear more
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(08:09):
Two, you can follow us across social media.
We have links in our show notes for that.
And three, sharing our podcasts,either the episodes or just
generally stuff we share on social media means the world.
And as always, we love you. Thank you for listening.
Let's move on to our secret games.

(08:39):
Secret Games. In Secret Games, we're going to
each review an indie game we've been playing secretly since our
last episode. We don't talk about what we're
going to pick for this segment, so I don't know what Disco Cola
is going to reveal and review today.
He doesn't know what I'm going to do for this segment, so we
can choose any indie game as long as we haven't reviewed it

(09:01):
on the show before. Disco Cola, we will start with
you. Let the mystery be no more.
Reveal your secret game for Episode 83 of Underplayed.
My Secret Game This episode is agame that I've streamed, so that
shortens the pool quite a bit. I'm trying to think my mind is
racing because I've I've seen a lot of the other games that

(09:22):
you've streamed. It is a rogue light run and gun
action platformer and I believe I streamed it on launch day but
I don't remember for sure. Either way, my secret game comes
from Night Shift games and it iscalled Elsie.
Eckies, once a beautiful planet,now in chaos.

(09:46):
For some time, the Guardians protected the people of Eckies,
but one day they disappeared. Mr. Gray has forged one final
chance, and Android Elsie built like none before her.
She will do whatever it takes tosave Eckie's and its people.
Join me, Elsie, on this journey.Find the Guardians, battle robot

(10:10):
armies, and save the world. Oh yes, this released last year.
Yeah, yes, I remember you anticipating this quite a bit
and it definitely seemed like a Disco Cola game.
Absolutely. Yeah, this is definitely a Mega
Man. Like, so hell yeah.
It's pretty straightforward. So yeah, Elsie follows the

(10:31):
titular character, the last remaining and most recent
creation of Doctor Grey. So this is your Doctor Light
analog here, but this time a woman instead of an elderly man.
We love that Elsie is meant to confront and pacify the
Guardians, other Android creations of Doctor Gray that
possess the ability to prevent natural disasters after they

(10:54):
have seemingly gone berserk or disappeared.
They're abandoning their post and so civilians of this planet
are suffering from these massivenatural disasters.
OK, yes, that's definitely influenced by Mega Man games.
I'm. The The Robot Masters
disappeared. Or they are.
They're going. Rogue, they turned against us.

(11:15):
Yeah, as Elsie you will run, jump, shoot, wall, climb, wall,
slide, air dash, slam, dive, andgain upgrades to defeat hordes
of robots on procedurally generated screens to reach the
Guardians and other bosses in this rogue light Mega Man.
Like during your run, you will access up to three of five

(11:39):
different themed areas. You will always start with the
air themed 1. So that's always level 1 is the
the air themed 1. You will encounter hordes of
smaller robots and these robots may drop currency which you can
use when you encounter these vending machine like shops.
These shops will offer a number of upgrades if you've purchased

(12:02):
them at home base. So you first have to find the
blueprint in a run and then at home base in between runs you
have to by the chance for them to appear in a run and then you
can find them at the shop. It's like what you do in Rogue
Legacy, but adding a step where you have to find a blueprint and

(12:22):
then you can just buy it before you go in the castle.
But this is like find the blueprint, buy the ability to
find it, and then buy it when you find a vending machine.
Maybe with a yeah, with a different currency.
So it's there's, there's like a few systems going on here.
Every 3 or 4 screens you face a locked room that has multiple

(12:43):
waves of enemies. And then at the end you will get
a treasure chest with maybe an upgrade or a key for locked
chests or a good amount of two other currencies called scrap or
Arclight coins. In between runs, you can use
scrap to permanently upgrade LC or repair shops and bonfires for

(13:04):
your runs or open other shops atthe home base.
And then Arclight coins are usedto build the upgrade items that
you find during runs. So like we said, we you purchase
them at home base to add them toa pool of randomized choices.
OK, so there's still there's there's meta progression, but it
is really heavily dependent on randomness inside the runs

(13:28):
itself and then going back to these locked rooms with waves of
enemies. After finishing those rooms, you
will be able to access a bonfirewhich will either recover some
of your health or add maximum energy or add maximum health.
And then you may encounter different shops a little bit
more randomly after that. Some will offer weapons or some

(13:53):
will offer just like other upgrades that you would
otherwise find in in special rooms.
So yeah, you go through about three or four of these locked
rooms per zone and then you willface one of three bosses per
zone. So you may not even face the
guardian of the specific zone when you visit it.
It may be one of the other two lesser bosses.

(14:14):
Kind of like the acts in Slay the Spire.
Like you're going to get one of several bosses at the end of
like the first section of the map.
Yeah, and then after defeating the boss, you will have your
choice of two other zones to visit next.
And these all follow elemental themes.
There's a tundra, there's the forge, the thorny jungle, the

(14:36):
electrified city, and then the the air themed starting zone.
And then each run will feature three of those zones.
And at the end of the third, youwill either reach a dead end and
return home, or if you've defeated and pacified all of the
Guardians, you'll enter the final area to confront the final
boss. OK.
Just the idea of like the three zones, That's already a

(14:58):
similarity with Moonlighter too,just very specifically.
Sounds like, yeah. So yeah, I think that covers the
gist of most of the systems going on.
Maybe a little too much into theweeds on it, but from there I'd
like to talk about stuff that I dig, stuff that I don't.
First and foremost, no surprise,I like the visual identity of

(15:20):
this game. I do kind of wish Elsie Sprite
was a little bit bigger, especially considering the game
proves later on that it can likezoom out when it's necessary for
the scale of a given room. But generally speaking, all of
the Sprite work, especially the backgrounds, is incredibly
attractive. The gameplay itself feels great.

(15:42):
Shooting and dashing are amazing.
There's even this parry mechanicand the margin for error in that
parry is pretty wide like which?And that's great because I'm
usually really bad at parrying in games and maybe the jump is a
little more floaty than I would usually like, but it, it
actually feels right in relationto Elsie's world and the rest of

(16:04):
her controls. So even that jump is a little
bit floaty. I I kind of like it.
Can you parry bullets or just melee?
Oh, OK. You can.
You can parry any attack what will hurt you.
Nice. You just have to time it right
and then you can even kind of counter attack in a way too.
OK, sweet. I love that once you collect and

(16:26):
unlock them, getting new skills kind of has this snowball
effect, and then if you've unlocked enough skills that
upgrade the same thing, you can do like crazy damage.
For example, I had a run where Icollected a huge number of
skills that increased my rate offire and increased my crit

(16:46):
chance. So I was throwing out like 8
bullets a second and each had 50% chance to crit and so by the
end of it I was just like mowingeverything down in seconds.
In another run I collected a boatload of skills that produced
fireflies and those fireflies are like small homing bugs that

(17:08):
will do chip damage. And so every few seconds my
enemies are being hit with like 40 plus pieces of chip damage,
or the fireflies are hitting enemies that are like really
high above me and not in my lineof sight.
So they're doing a lot of work for me.
That sounds like something I would.
Love it's really good if you getthe luck to like have a lot of

(17:29):
synergistic skills in your runs.And I'll give that my own note
here in the positive section. I think fireflies are
overpowered, but I kind of don'tcare.
I just, I really love them a lot.
We like feeling overpowered. Yeah, I'm, I'm into it.
I also really like the variety of bosses.
You do have all 5/7 guardians and they're all pretty different

(17:51):
from the other except for the triplets have a shared design
aesthetic. But then you have the other two
lesser bosses per zone and they're pretty creative in
design. They're not like these humanoid
androids. You have like 1 and the four,
just like this giant eyeball that controls a bunch of
conveyor belts that, you know, drop lava on you or something.

(18:14):
Or in the tundra you have this giant walrus man.
Like they're all pretty different.
This game has voice acting and Ithink it's pretty solid.
I do think that it would annoy you, Bobo.
Not necessarily like the story dialogues, but like Elsie will
make comments throughout the run.

(18:36):
She'll say in the rear with the gear or I could really use a
drink or you know, and she'll say that a lot.
What is in the rear with the gear mean?
She's just she's getting new gear at the shop and so that'll
be one of her randomized things that she'll say I'll.
Be thinking about that for a while.
She's going to get someone else in the rear with.
Gotcha. Yeah, OK, still a very AOL

(18:58):
comment. No.
Yeah, that kind of thing can drive me a little nuts.
It makes me think of like viewfinder is what the comments
you make. Viewfinder, yeah.
And there are two kinds of it. One is just when it's so
constant that it's kind of obnoxious and you don't really,
maybe you don't like the tone ofthe voice.
But the other thing is when the comments themselves are repeated

(19:20):
a lot, like the specific lines of dialogue, there aren't many
of them, and so you hear the same ones over and over.
That can really turn me off. And this one might be a little
bit of. Both SO.
I could see it annoying you, butin general, I think all of the
voice acting, especially in the,in the, especially in the story
dialogues, I think it's fine. Sure, narratively there's a a

(19:44):
big twist in the game and I kindof like it.
Like, I don't know that it's necessarily like done the best,
but the twist itself, I'm like, I'm kind of I'm kind of into it.
OK, cool. From there though, I'll move on
to things I don't love as much. I just praised the variety of
bosses, but this is also one of my least favorite parts of the
game if I understand how the game works correctly.

(20:08):
You have to be each of the two lesser bosses in each zone
before you even get the chance to face the guardian.
So when you're going through thefirst level, you have to face
Soul, the sun themed robot, and then you have to go back again
and beat Luna, the the moon themed robot, and then maybe
you'll get a chance to face the guardian of that zone.

(20:30):
OK, so and I and I think randomness takes a back seat if
you've defeated one of the lesser bosses and not the other.
If I understand it right, and I didn't test this, each time you
revisit that zone you'll face the one you haven't beaten.
So I think it's a little bit considerate with randomness

(20:50):
there. But either way, no matter what,
even the most skilled players can't beat Elsie on their first
run. Not only that, the earliest you
can beat it, if I understand it correctly, is run number six.
And that kind of bums me out as Mega Man.
Like, I think you should be ableto decimate the game if you're

(21:12):
unnaturally talented, but this game's leaning more into the
rogue light side of things. And I don't know, it's, it's one
of those things that I find antithetical to Mega Man likes.
I, I do think after having tried20 XX that making man likes and
rogue lights can exist in the same package.

(21:33):
But this is just one of those aspects that I if, if you're
forcing me to replay it, even ifI'm like the best LC player in
the world, that's kind of a burn.
And I don't know if 20 XX is this way.
I haven't beaten it. I imagine you can beat it on the
first try if you're skilled enough, from what I understand
about it, but I don't know. Next, I think there's a little

(21:55):
bit left to random chance, a little, just a little too much.
I know that's Rogue Lights, but even the shops only give me
three options and I I don't feellike that's enough.
I don't really have a lot of control over making a cohesive
build. Oh.
Yeah, you're just taking what the game.
Taking what the game gets you and it it can still can happen

(22:15):
pretty easily. Like you still eventually get
kind of what you're looking for but I don't I I think a re roll
option could do well for this game.
Whether it's something you buy as like a perma upgrade, you get
one re roll per shop, or maybe something you find during your
runs like keys I think a re rollwould.
Help. I've been playing lots of
roguelikes recently where a re roll is something you can

(22:38):
unlock. Maybe it's not available right
at the start but it's something you use currency to use and
maybe the more times you re rollthe more expensive it gets.
So that's the risk reward. The more currency you're
spending on the re rolls, the less currency you have for other
things like permanent purchases or just upgrades for that

(22:59):
particular run. Hell clock had this.
I've been playing Asgard's Fall which came out this year and
those kind of use re rolls in a really fun accessible but also
like fairway. Yeah, I think that would be a
good way to maybe eliminate thiscomplaint of mine and would
probably not be that hard to implement in an update.

(23:19):
Do you get the sense that they're still working on this
game, or have they kind of movedon?
I'll get to that in a minute. OK, Next up, this game has
something called guardian trigger, which is like a a
special gauge that fills up overtime.
But I'm either like not using itto its full extent or I don't
understand it because it's it's kind of useful in boss rooms or

(23:41):
rooms with a lot of bullets, butnot very.
And it just it doesn't it like pauses the entire gameplay when
you activate it and and does this like little cutscene across
the screen. But it doesn't really seem
worthy of that, you know, if I'musing it correctly.
So there's either something moreto it that I don't get or it's

(24:02):
just like not as useful as it isdramatic.
And then lastly, but mostly thisgame lacks a significant amount
of Polish, which is a shame because the controls part is
like down pat. There will be like weird text
errors. There will be like spaces in one
spot but missing from another identical spot.

(24:25):
More than one example of text and voice acting repeating the
same thing twice in a row duringstory moments.
Voice acting won't match the text in significant ways.
Sometimes rewards for special challenges won't load.
Currency will drop from enemies and appear in the next room
instead of that room. One time I like took damage and

(24:47):
fell backward into a locked room.
Meanwhile, while I'm in this locked room, I can hear all the
enemies I was just facing on theother side of the wall.
But none of my skills can kill enemies through walls.
So I had to. Like, I was stuck.
I had to quit that run. There was nothing I could do.
So like on their own, all of these different issues are not

(25:07):
massive deals, they're pretty small deals, but all together
it's pretty impossible to overlook.
And I just I don't, I don't see like why one big patch update
can't make this game a ton better because it's just like
it's most of the way there. And like a lot of the reviews on
Steam, like on Steam, this has mixed reviews and very few

(25:29):
reviews to start, which is a little bit odd.
But a lot of them point to like these small, you know, quality
issues. And they're talking about, most
of them are talking about like UI and POS screens which I
didn't necessarily have issues with, but it's just more of the
same like small quality. Control.
There's a lot of things that canadd up sometimes.

(25:51):
It's not one glaring thing that just suddenly ruins it.
It's just this feeling that, like you said, there's not
Polish across the board. You know, right And I I hope
that they work on it more and just give us that big patch
update because it's just it's almost there.
The controls feel really good and the pixel art is amazing.

(26:12):
Yeah, those are some like fundamentals you want to have
and I think this this trailer that I'm watching for the game,
it still looks really stunning and really fun.
Yeah, and even like, even the story, like Mega Man likes don't
need sophisticated stories. And this isn't a sophisticated
story, but it's like it's above average for most Make a Man
games, I would say. So I don't know.

(26:34):
Elsie is a really solid entry inthe Mega Man like space.
And if you're a massive fan of Mega Man, especially Mega Man X,
there's going to be a lot of really fun Easter eggs for you
to find and that's a delight when you first encounter them.
Controlling Elsie felt pretty good pretty much all of the time
and that made it hard to put down.

(26:54):
I went a couple extra runs most nights then I wanted to.
All that being said, the game ismissing some attention to
quality control and that's one of the main things holding it
back from being a standout RogueMega Man Light.
I do still think it's worth a shot if you're a fan of 20 XX or
Mega Man X, but if those qualityissues are a massive concern of

(27:18):
yours, maybe wait until it's on sale.
I did still have a lot of fun and I do still want to keep
playing. I give LC an 8 point O.
Oh wow, that's higher than I expected.
So since this is a rogue light version of the Mega Man action
platformer, you're unlocking theability to purchase things.

(27:39):
For instance, you are getting some meta progression.
It takes some time to set that stuff up and to actually benefit
from it. You're augmenting future runs by
finding things. Do you still have things to find
and unlock in this game? Do you have anything left to do
that you still want to do? So I started from scratch on
cancer trophies for this episode.

(28:01):
Yeah, so cancer. Trophies being Disco Cola's kind
of junk profile on PlayStation. Yes, where I also played
Moonlighter just spoiler the thepurpose being that I don't want
to collect all the trophies. So I started from scratch and
there's a I'm still getting blueprints like really every
other room Wow while I'm playingWow now on the disco cola

(28:23):
profile. I think I played up to the point
where I found and purchased everything I can with Arclight
coins, but I still am missing some trophies but not a ton.
OK. So you've almost done full
completion. Yeah, nice.
Yeah. And I will eventually complete
the trophy list. Very good.
It's just the ones that I have left, if I'm not mistaken, are

(28:44):
like random chance based. Like you have to equip a set of
things and I you just have to beable to find all of them in the
same run. I get that.
OK, that'll take some time, but it's not something you can
entirely control yourself. You just have to put in the
time, right? All right, cool.
I don't think I have any other questions.
I'm glad you got to review this full game.

(29:06):
I know you had been looking forward to it, and I'm glad that
it was overall positive experience for you.
Where can you play Elsie? Elsie is available on PC, Switch
and PlayStation 5, which is where I played it.
Very nice, It is time for my secret Game.
My secret game actually does have quite a bit in common with

(29:26):
our featured game today, Moonlighter.
It's less action focused, but you'll see some similarities.
I don't usually have this much synergy in my secret game, but
my secret game is Jamporia. You know, I have heard of this,

(30:06):
but only in the sense that the music is apparently really
awesome. That's all I know about it.
Yeah, it's interesting you say that about the music, because I
think the music is probably good, but I don't remember it a
time, honestly. But you'll I think you'll find
out why after I start talking about this game.
Jemporium is a 2025 mining simulation game.

(30:28):
It was developed and published by Merge Conflict Studio.
The game synopsis from the Steamstorefront reads Quote, Mine,
refine, and sell gemstones of various rarities to Eagerly
awaiting customers in Jemporium,A mining simulation management
game. Manage your time wisely while
purchasing upgrades and growing your shop's reputation day by

(30:48):
day. And quote, I want to thank our
friend Kass who gifted me this game.
Actually, this game came out on my birthday and I had seen it in
the wholesome directs, which I got to Co stream earlier this
year. And Kass and I both noted this
game is looking really appealingand Kass also played it as well.

(31:09):
So Castro 5, thank you so much. Yes, Kass.
Yes, Kass, can I get a yes in the comments on the episode
please? Thank you very much.
I really appreciate the Gifted game.
So in Jemporium it is a top downperspective where you play as
mole who is going to visit his grand mole for the summer and

(31:33):
grand mole. Grand mole surprises you right
away. Grand Mole forgot that you're
coming to visit and has plans anentire vacation where she is
elsewhere and she's not at home,right?
So you have planned this whole summer of visiting Grand Mole.
She's not there. You arrive at her Burrow to wait

(31:53):
for her to come back. But keeping you company is Grand
Mole's pet rock Pietro, who letsyou into her home.
Yes, Pietro is a sentient pet rock who talks to you and all
everything. So at what point is it a pet and
not a slave? You know, it's funny, wears a

(32:13):
collar and kind of looks like a slave in a way, but there's no
connotation like that. It's just supposed to be this
bizarre sort of tertiary character hanging out and
talking to you. From not to derail the episode
too much, but it's just like I'm, I'm thinking back to like
night in the woods where like you have a may and then you have
cats, stray cats running around.Right, it's.

(32:35):
You know, it's kind of whenever stuff like that happens, I'm
like, there's what's the what's going on?
What are the ethics of this? What are the rules of this
universe? I am not sure.
No additional information is provided unfortunately on how
pet rocks work in Gemporium. But here's the extra kicker.
Grand Mole has a gemporium that she wants you to run while she's

(33:00):
gone, and you're just this kid who has no shop or work
experience, and she's asking youto run this business in her
stead. And so you have no choice but to
agree to this. And this game is all about doing
this loop that only lasts for a few minutes each day.

(33:21):
So you wake up, you explore the mines beneath Grand Mole's home.
You excavate for gems in mind spots, you bring those gems back
to your workbench to refine them, and then you open your
shop for the last, I don't know,third of the day or so.
And that's where you can sell your gems to customers.
And you have to be careful when you're mining.

(33:42):
When you're down there, you lookat a dig spot and you can Click
to start digging with a hammer. But you can crack gems if you
hammer them too much. So you kind of have to work
around them. You also have a drill that lets
you more finely dig them out andafter you refine all those gems,
you're in that shop where patrons will have preferred gems

(34:06):
that they'll pay more money for.So someone might say like I
would love an amethyst, I'll payyou more money for an amethyst,
but I don't want a pair of dots.If you have a pair of dots I
will pay you half price. I will leave.
I will, yeah. Or.
Burn your building down. No, but you eventually get to

(34:27):
buy upgrades using the money that you earn from the shop.
So you can buy a bigger bag to hold more gems.
You can unlock the ability to haggle with customers to try to
sway them to have a different preferred gem that you might be
carrying. You can buy upgrades to sway
customers to prefer a certain kind of gem overall.
Throughout the day. You can also find artifacts in

(34:49):
the mines that provide a passiveincrease to the amount of money
you can sell gems for. And you find out after a little
bit of doing this that grandma has one more surprise for you
that she didn't tell you about. Again, this is all while she's
on vacation. I know what you're going to say,
I'm I'm building a backlogged list for it right now.

(35:10):
Grandma is in debt to the tune of 1,000,000 glimmer, which is
the currency of this game to theloan shark.
And the loan shark shows up demanding payments for the
principal of the loan. And I don't remember a ton about
the loan itself and like what it's for.
But basically now this debt, this shop, this daily job that's

(35:34):
very strenuous, all falls to little mole, not grand mole.
And the loan shark will show up every Wednesday and Saturday I
believe to collect a debt and the amount increases as time
goes on. So your goal is to find gems,
run the gemporium shop and pay off this debts.

(35:56):
And then sometimes Grand Mole will call you on the phone to
talk about her vacation and check in on you, and you're left
to your Mulsum self in this place.
So here's what I liked about Gemporium.
I think this game is super addicting.
It's one of those games where you can play in game day after
in game day and you can do so many of them in a short amount

(36:16):
of time that doesn't, it doesn'tfeel like you're spending that
much time playing the game. But then two hours have passed
and I had a a night where I wanted to go to bed at a certain
time and I just kept playing Gemporium.
It rides this really unexpected line between cozy and stressful.
It's a very wholesome setting these character.
It's like a hand drawn, very cartoony like storybook like

(36:40):
aesthetic. But then you also need to always
be going quite fast. You need to be very efficient
with your time to keep the loan shark at arm's length.
You always have a upcoming payment to him, and so you can't
just dilly dally. You have to use your limited
time each day to make the most money you can.

(37:00):
And this game is quite challenging at the start.
It's the the debt that he's asking you to pay will increase
and you'll think I don't have enough time in the day to get
that much. Like I don't know how he's going
to ask me for an amount that I won't be able to pay off.
But then I think this game gets somewhat easier over time
because the upgrades really helpyou out to become exponentially

(37:23):
more wealthy. And upgrades are also super
satisfying. There's an automatic refiner
that you can throw unrefined gems into and it will almost
like a washing machine, just sort of work on them.
And then they'll it'll they'll all be polished.
And that's less time you have tospend polishing and refining the
gems. That's one of my favorites that

(37:44):
you can buy upgrades that let you descend deeper into the mind
where you get more valuable gemslike opals and diamonds and
things. Let's see what else You can
manipulate the market really easily so that you can influence
like the you get a television that will forecast like the most
valuable gems for that day. You can manipulate things so

(38:07):
that's, you get to determine what the preferred gem is for
that day. And then more customers on
average might want rubies or sapphires or emeralds, whatever
you determine. So yeah, I, I really like buying
all these. I also super love haggling.
It just really allows you to manipulate the shop at the end

(38:29):
of your days and make the most money possible.
I also really like the Twitch integration in this game.
I did stream this game a little bit and it's really fun and
simple. It allows your chatters to
appear as customers in the shop.And they can.
They can set custom messages to greet you with.
So I was having people coming into my shop and they might be a

(38:51):
little worm with a cowboy hat onand they have a custom greeting
that you won't see from any of the other NPCS.
So they get to also set what message they say if you sell
them a non preferred gem or a preferred gem too.
So that. Would have had a lot of fun
with. That it was so funny seeing what
people came up with, and they were referencing inside jokes

(39:15):
from earlier in the stream. So yeah, just one of those
examples of a Twitch integrationthat doesn't have to be complex.
It doesn't have to completely change the nature of the game.
It's just a cute little way to get people involved.
So I super enjoyed that. I move on to things that I
didn't like as much. I don't think this is an
incredibly deep experience. You get to day 30 or 40 and the

(39:41):
expansiveness of what the game offers really slows down for me.
And also there are some activities in the loop that I
got tired of doing. One of them is when you refine
gems, you have to do this short mini game where you match a
moving icon on a bar. There's like a little section of

(40:01):
the bar where that's. Not my favorite mini game.
And you do that hundreds of times that that mini game
doesn't really change other thangetting faster and harder
depending on how rare the gem is.
So I just don't like that as much.
That's why I love the automatic refiner.
The I call it the washing machine.
I just throw my gems in there. But you can't refine all your

(40:22):
stuff using the automatic refiner.
You have to do a lot of it manually.
Now kids, if you're out there, don't throw your gems in your
real. Washing machine?
Yes, all your precious valuable gems that you find under Grand
Mole's house. I'm more worried about the
washing machine to be honest. Yeah, also the game just kind of
ends at the end of the game and there's not like a lot of hoopla

(40:44):
to the conclusion. But you can you can keep playing
the game to do more day cycles. You can turn off the the
pressure of the time mechanic sothat you can just explore at
your own pace and then open yourshop when you want and just buy
the rest of the upgrades. But I didn't see a strong, like
I didn't feel a strong pull to go back into the constant loop

(41:08):
after I paid off the debt. But I did pay off the debt and
it was very satisfying to do that.
Yeah, I didn't mention it, but Elsie also kind of just sort of
ends. And that's a part of like the
lack of Polish. You know, the cutscenes will
just sort of randomly happen once you meet the trigger.
And it's not not sophisticated. Yeah, so.

(41:29):
So there wasn't a lot there at the ends to make me feel like,
wow, that wrapped up beautifully.
But I really liked the fun mixture of collecting and
selling and upgrading that kept me playing.
I played Gemporium for close to 10 hours.
You do run out of upgrades to buy at a certain point, but
that's around the time when the game is wrapping up and you can

(41:50):
choose to keep doing those runs.And it was perfectly pleasant
while I was playing. It's just like in the moment
while you're playing Jim Porium.It's super addicting and I can
just keep playing and playing and playing.
I'm going to rate it an 8 out of10.
It's playable on PC and I believe it's only playable on
PC, which is obviously the the version I played.

(42:12):
Cool. I guess could you get a little
bit more into the weeds about like haggling?
What does that look like? Cuz that to me sounds like a
stressful part of the game. Cuz it's like in Moonlighter we
set and can change our prices based on reaction, but it's a

(42:32):
lot more passive than what I think was probably going on
here. It's very simple.
You buy the ability to haggle and then if a customer comes
into your shop and they prefer citrine and you don't have
citrine, you could put a sapphire down on the table and
you could press the haggle button and there's a chance that
that customer will change their minds to sapphire.

(42:55):
But you only get three chances per customer.
If you try haggling 3 times and they don't swap their opinion,
they'll just move on and then the next customer will come up.
So you have to put down the gem that you want them to swap their
opinion to, but you can upgrade the haggle so that it's more
successful on average. That's really all it is.
It's just clicking a button. And then there's a mechanic

(43:19):
called your shop's reputation. As you sell more preferred gems
to customers, your reputation will go up, which will, I
believe, increase the number of customers that come to your shop
every day. It might do something else.
I think it also maybe unlocks more passive upgrades for you to
buy if you haggle unsuccessfully.

(43:41):
It says minus reputation so I think your reputation is going
down, but I didn't notice a big change when I would do it so I
would always spam haggle and when I had it fully upgraded
most of the time I could convince any customer to love
any kind of gem that I put in. Front of you're so charismatic.
Yes, yeah, you get a silver tongue, I guess as little mole,

(44:03):
quite the quite the seller. Yeah, I don't.
I don't think I have anything else.
That was the only part that I had question marks about.
And now I've added this to a newbacklogged list of games with
literal loan sharks, which includes Jamporium and another
Crab's Treasure. Nice.

(44:23):
I'm sure there are more. I think there are, but I don't
know. There's there's loan sharks in
the big con, but they are humans.
OK, yeah, I wouldn't count those.
Yeah, literal loan sharks, people.
Let us know if there are other literal loan sharks in indie
games. We would love to expand that
list. There are also these three bats
that stand on each other's heads.

(44:44):
Oh, and a trench coat. Yeah, I saw them in the trailer.
Yes, and they're who you talk to, to manipulate the market, to
try to influence shoppers to prefer a certain gem that you
might have a lot of in your inventory.
OK, so it does have the more like shady nature to it like I
first thought, yeah. Yeah, there.
There's something kind of seedy about this game.

(45:06):
Yeah, it's wholesome and cute and charming, but it's also got
some some bad actors. Yeah.
Yeah. Including grand mole.
Grand Mole's up to some stuff. Just like the real world.
Right. Everybody has skeletons.
Yeah. So yeah, that's another way that
I find it super charming. And I do recommend this to a lot

(45:28):
of people. I think, you know, anyone would
appreciate at least playing a day or two in game and then
seeing if it hooks you. So those are our secret games,
Elsie and Jamporium. Let's move on to our review of
Moonlighter. It is our featured game.

(45:55):
Moonlighter is a 2018 action RPGRogue Lights, developed by
Digital Sun and published by 11 Bit Studios.
The game synopsis from the Steamstorefront reads quote.
Moonlighter is an action RPG with rogue light elements that
demonstrates two sides of the coin, revealing everyday
routines of Will, an adventurousshopkeeper that secretly dreams

(46:19):
of becoming a hero. Every hero has a goal, a quest,
a final destination. However, most of us are not just

(46:39):
natural born heroes. We start dreaming when we are
kids and when we grow up we tendto focus on making a living.

(47:07):
But some of us keep on dreaming.Moonlighter is this top down
perspective game where you play as will a residence in the
village of Rynoka I. That's how I've been saying it.
I. Don't see any other way to say
it. OK, and Will runs a shop called

(47:29):
the Moonlighter. Rhinoca is situated near these
mysterious gates that I think were uncovered during like an
excavation a long time ago. And these gates lead to other
dimensions. And in them merchants will
venture in to gather loot to sell.
Whereas another class of people in this town, heroes, will
explore them to kill monsters and be exactly what they sound

(47:53):
like, heroic. There's kind of two factions
going on, if you will and Will aspires to be a merchant and a
hero kind of all in one. All but one of the dungeons is
sealed, so Will explores the first one and finds information
about guardians. Of all the dungeons, there are
these big bosses and slaying them will give you a key

(48:17):
necessary to open the 5th and final dungeon, which holds some
pretty big secrets inside of it.So that's what I would say to
set up the setting and the lightstory that's going on in
Moonlighter. How about what we do gameplay
wise? So gameplay wise, I kind of I
kind of separated it into two modes.

(48:38):
You have your dungeon mode and your shop mode.
So in dungeon mode, you can attack with some equipped
weapon, whether it be sword or gauntlet or a bow or a spear.
You can roll dodge, you can healif you have potions equipped,
you can swap between two different weapons that you can

(48:59):
carry with you and you can rearrange your backpack and
that's going to play. That's going to take up a lot of
the the game play time in the dungeon.
Apart from fighting monsters, asfar as shop mode, you can also
arrange your inventory the same way you arrange your backpack.
You just have access to chests as well as spots on the shop

(49:21):
shelves to place items. You can adjust prices, and you
can check prices and change those prices based on reactions
from previous attempts to sell. You can raise or lower it in
shop mode. You can also tackle thieves.
You can also upgrade the town, which looks like inviting new

(49:45):
types of businesses to set up in.
In Rinoka, you can upgrade your shop, which will include the
number of spots where you can place items to sell.
Eventually, you can hire an assistant essentially.
You can also visit the forge or the potion maker to forge and
enhance equipment respectively. Every other character that sets

(50:09):
up shop is is essentially like selling you an item or upgrading
your shop or giving you money toan extent.
And you're kind of seeing the town flourish as you buy some of
these upgrades. Not like drastically, but it
feels like you were pumping money into the economy of
Binoka. That's sort of a theme here is
that the town sort of underwent some tough times after these

(50:34):
gates were. Found yes, it's like steam world
dig levels of of brain drain here.
Definitely. And so you're seeing that sort
of evolve. Yeah, so more and more NPCS will
show up the further you get to the game.
Doesn't play a big role really in the end.
But yeah, I between dungeon modeand shop mode, those are most of

(50:55):
your like inputs and actions that you can perform.
Yeah. I mean, it's it a more recent
game is Cult of the Lamb that I think was probably influenced by
this. That's not the last time we'll
bring up Cult of the Lamb this episode.
Oh interesting. OK cool, probably in your
thoughts then. And then there are some
interesting developments with this game and series, like a DLC

(51:16):
expansion called Between Dimensions was released in 2019.
I didn't play this. It's it's on my title screen
when I start my game. So I have it, you have it.
I don't know what is included init or if I've participated in
any of it. OK, well if you talk about
something that doesn't match my experience, that could maybe
explain what's going on. But also there's a sequel called

(51:38):
Moonlighter 2, The Endless Vaults, which is dated for
October of this year. I think it's coming out in Early
Access 1st. And yeah, this is a game that
we've heard about for over 7 years already, and that's a
long-awaited sequel. Seven years for a SQL is quite a
long time. I know lots of people were super

(51:58):
excited about the sequel when itwas announced, and it's a good
time to review Moonlighter, so Disco Cola.
Unless there's anything else to set up the game, what were your
thoughts on Moonlighter? Generally overall I had a better
time than I expected after learning about all the different
rogue light elements and and managing shops, but I'll break

(52:21):
it down piece by piece let you know what I'm into.
First of all, I like the varietyof monsters in the dungeons, but
I also like that there are certain kinds of monsters that
are similar across each dungeon,they just change based on the
theme or the elements. You go, oh, this is this
dungeon's version of this. Yeah, yeah.

(52:42):
And so I appreciate that. So you get a little bit of
variety, but you also get, you know, like a set of something
like the set of slimes. And I'm like, yeah, I'm into
that. I think the pixel art in this
game is great. Just as soon as you turn on the
game and it's just going throughlike the developer icon

(53:03):
animations, just those alone aresuper attractive, but it's it's
only a preview of what you're going to see later.
Just everything looks really good in this game.
Like Elsie. I think the controls feel pretty
great at almost all times. I think we're always moving at a
fair speed, even when we get slowed down by heavy equipment

(53:25):
with speed nerves. I will note here that I said
fair speed. I do wish that just in general
we were a little bit faster evenat the baseline.
Yeah, I would take like 10 percent, 15% faster movement.
That'd be great. But in the context of the game,
I think it's a fair speed. Oh, is this one of those games
where you can move faster in general if you keep rolling?

(53:47):
I It seemed like it was to me, yeah, 'cause I feel.
Like I was doing that too. Yeah, yeah, I was just rolling
everywhere and even if it wasn'tlike I didn't notice it being
slower, at least like I experienced in some other game I
don't recently. Yeah, we've had a couple of
those over time. To a point, I do like the guess
and check nature of selling items and then also

(54:10):
extrapolating prices of newly discovered items based on what
are around them on the list. After a while I kind of got the
point. It was like as you go down the
list they get less and less valuable.
And so I was able to like extrapolate based on information
I already had. And by the end of the game I was
pretty much guessing perfect prices on the items right away.

(54:31):
So that, wow, that felt pretty good.
You're using prior knowledge andexperience to really affect
funding the big purchases of thegame ultimately.
Yeah. And that all of that plus a
little bit of like this guess isa vibe.
So there's, there's a little bitof vibes going in there too.
I like how our power scales. I find that it's a pretty linear

(54:55):
trend upward and prices of the equipment scale in mostly the
same way. So what this means as a result
is that I guess depending on howmany tries it took you to finish
a dungeon, we only have to do a little bit of grinding after
each dungeon, if if any at all. And it usually only feels like

(55:17):
two or three revisits before we have all the equipment and
materials and the money that we need to upgrade to the point
where we're ready to face the next boss.
Yeah. So like, I finished the desert
and then I went back to the desert like 3 times maybe to get
all of the materials I needed for my next set of armor and

(55:39):
enough items to sell to buy it. And then I was ready to face the
next boss. And that was kind of the same.
Yeah. In between each dungeon.
Yeah, I was finding that just ingeneral, I was maybe spending a
roughly the same amount of time per dungeon, like two or three
hours to clear a dungeon before I'm ready to move on to the
next. It wasn't like dungeon four had

(56:01):
me working at it for like 7 hours.
Exactly. And so that's what I mean, it's
a pretty linear scale upward where it's like every dungeon,
even though it is literally tougher, you're spending as much
time with it. Yeah, I think it was.
By the third dungeon I was able to accurately ballpark how many
hours I had left and that helpedme plan out my play sessions and

(56:24):
plan out the the timeline for finishing the game before.
Today, Yeah, yeah. And that I noticed that same
thing as well. I do love that we get a little
bit of creature collection in the game.
Oh yeah, the little buddies, the.
Little buddies, I added this game to the Better Butter Better
Butto Bureau list after after I realized I had that.

(56:45):
Oh, good catch. Yes, I forgot about that list.
But yeah, I love that we get to do that.
I kind of would take a little bit more, but right now I'm only
missing 1 Butto. But once I got my little leaf
dude, he stayed with me for the rest of the game.
OK, so here's something that I potentially entirely missed out

(57:07):
on. Can you bring your buttos into
the dungeon? You can.
How do you do that? There is a sign next to that
fence that you can interact with.
I never did that. You could totally miss it.
I thought it was like a petting zoo here, but you don't even get
to pet them or feed them. You just look at them.
You just look at them. I thought it was like a like.
A trophy case. Exactly, I thought it was like

(57:27):
an aesthetic, just something that's in Rinoca and you walk by
it. I never touched that sign dude.
Yeah, that's too bad. I didn't notice it for a long
time and I saw that they were like creatures in there and I
didn't even know how I got them at first.
I was aware that I was collecting them in the dungeons
and, you know, I would see them in the little fence.

(57:47):
I'd go, oh, yeah, I just got that.
But that's the extent that I understood.
And so do the little Buttos fight with you?
Oh, yeah. Wow.
Do they distract enemies? I I don't know, no, not really.
The enemies aren't like going aggro after your your butt.
Oh, but like my leaf dude does the same thing that the leaf

(58:07):
dudes do in the dungeon. They just throw a homing ball of
air. Oh, that's cool.
And so I just, I used him for the rest of the time because
he's cute and I like leaves and.Wow, so I made the game
unintentionally a little bit harder on.
Myself, I mean, they're not making drastic differences, at
least mine wasn't. Maybe the electric slime is
like, you know, carrying the weight on his back.

(58:30):
I don't. Know like it against a boss it
might save you a few hits. Yeah, absolutely.
Especially like I would say during the desert boss, my leaf
dude was like really helping out.
Nice. So yeah, I love the creature
collection and maybe my favoritething about the game is the like
recipe system of armor and weapons.
And it's not like exhausting, it's like just right.

(58:53):
And this was, I found, probably the most enjoyable and
motivating factor for me to go back into dungeons.
I'd love to keep playing this game, if only for getting one of
each equipment and final weapon,like fully upgraded and fully
enhanced. That sounds really fun to me.
And then the last thing that I want to point out in the section

(59:14):
is that vampirism is back. I found a vampirism amulet and I
I never let it go. I never swapped it out.
Nice, so we saw this trend in Rogue Legacy few episodes ago
and now we're back baby. Yeah, it didn't carry as much
weight as it did in Rogue Legacy, but it's still it helped
quite a bit. Very cool.
All right. And how about things that didn't

(59:36):
work so well? Things that didn't work so well.
This game didn't quite go as faras like blueprints and
overstaying its welcome, but it was just a little bit longer
than I was prepared for it to be.
PlayStation clocks me in at about 19 hours.
Next, I can see how the puzzle of placing cursed artifacts in
your bag can be a fun game. I imagine that you possibly

(59:59):
enjoyed this. I I actually did, yeah.
I did. And I, you know, there were a
couple times where I enjoyed using it to clear up space when
that was an option. But mostly it feels like a
chore. Like I just cleared this room of
all these monsters and maybe I just barely made it out and my
reward is more homework. And then most of the items or

(01:00:21):
stuff I've already picked up elsewhere from like enemy drops
and they don't have curses on them.
Yeah, so it creates a new stack that you have to manage.
I So to answer your suspicion about how I felt about this, it
really did depend on how much I was getting at once.
Like if I open a chest and I get2 extra things that I don't have

(01:00:42):
space for. I didn't mind doing the
rearranging and the decision making, but it's when you would
sometimes open a chest and have 7 things and it's like, OK, I
get what this is doing. It's making me make decisions
and it's breaking up the pacing,but sometimes it can be a little
bit too much. So I I'm kind of like here with
it and I'm also against it sometimes.

(01:01:04):
Yeah. And like when I would open a
chest and even if I did get a lot of items, if they had the,
like, curse that destroys another artifact's curse or one
that sends one home, like that can be fun.
But when you open up a chest of seven and it's like this can
only be in the bottom of the bagand this one can only be in the
side of the bag and this one is fragile, this.
Was fragile. Yep.

(01:01:24):
You just sometimes it's just better to just throw some of
those out unless you really needthem back home.
And it's that felt like homework.
It felt like a chore and it was kind of a bummer since most of
the time it is the like fragile or only the side of the bag
stuff. So this is a weird one weird
complaint. But the button layout I found to

(01:01:44):
be kind of unintuitive in its natural state.
And I don't I don't mention thisevery time I do change a button
layout, but I did this one and even still I never got it quite
right. And I think this might be more a
matter of like 2 separate actions being mapped to the same
button for different situations.So and and the the actions that

(01:02:07):
get mapped to the same button don't necessarily make sense.
Maybe. Anyways, I changed my combat
controls to be closer to something like Call to the Lamb,
but that also meant that anytimeI was interacting with
something, I was interacting with Square, which felt like a
weird button to be interacting with things.
I also changed my scheme and when I changed my scheme to

(01:02:28):
something I'm more familiar with, like I moved dash from
like L2 to circle, that just made sense to me.
I changed the attack button to square.
I had moments where my game locked up because the prompts to
interact with text or pick up items or open chess would kind
of get confused and it would lock my game and I at one point

(01:02:53):
could not move on. I tried every button I had to
switch back to default controls because I didn't want to wrestle
with that anymore. So I actually had like a glitch
or something in this game that forced me to turn the game off,
lose my progress for that dungeon run, and I had to
restart the game, switch my settings back to default, and I
just resolved to get comfortablewith the default weird controls.

(01:03:16):
I think the default button layout is quite strange.
Wow, so I I changed my button layout pretty drastically
because I also forgot that dash roll was on one of the shoulder
buttons. I moved it to to cross to be
more like Cult of the Lamb. OK.
Yeah, smart. I didn't.
I didn't lock up anywhere, but that's really weird.
Is weird. Sorry about that.

(01:03:37):
Yeah. So.
But for me it was like it was mostly like L1 and R1, like
opening my bag and switching weapons.
I would just get those confused all the time.
So that's, that's the one, the main one.
Narratively I don't quite followwhere this game goes.
I think inheriting a shop in a town near terrible dungeons is

(01:04:00):
enough honestly. I don't think.
Just the gymporium approach. Yeah, I don't.
I don't think we need the endingthat the game gives us to
explain the why. And even then there's like texts
to read in the dungeon along theway, and I'm not really piercing
together those with different texts, let alone matching it up
to the ending. So if this game is like leaving

(01:04:23):
metaphorical bread crumbs to theultimate conclusion, I'm just
stumbling onto the ending accidentally.
The texts, I think, are telling me things that aren't huge
surprises. Like, I think they're sort of
giving some lore about the monsters and the dungeons and
how the keys work and the interdimensionality of what's
going on. But none of it is like, so

(01:04:44):
revelatory that I'm like, oh, this changes the game.
You all this. I'm so invested in this.
I think it's just sort of reinforcing my suspicions about
what's going on a lot of the time where there's this
character called Crazy Pete who's leaving behind all these
notes. And Crazy Pete never like,
surprised me in any profound way.
But yeah, I think this game doescram a lot in at the end.

(01:05:06):
I think it does feel an obligation to have such an
unexpected like last dungeon andalong with that is just sort of
this convoluted exposition dump.Yeah.
That, yeah, I didn't really click with, but for all I know,
maybe that maybe they're really intelligently using that as a

(01:05:27):
jumping off point for Moonlighter 2.
It's just, is that pay off goingto be worth it?
I don't. Know yeah, I didn't I didn't
need the ending that we got likeit's it's enough for me to just
have these weird dungeons you know it's already like such a
medieval magical looking kind ofspace anyway it's like that's
just part of it. Sometimes saying less is just

(01:05:49):
fine, and when the game spends so much time not really throwing
a story at us, it's such a mismatch at the end to then just
shove it all down our throat andhave a sit through like a bunch
of dialogue. It's not something that like
majorly annoyed me, it's just something I didn't super care
about. Yeah, I was.

(01:06:09):
I was not invested in what was happening at all.
The only, the only thing that had me invested narratively was
like the old man who maybe he has a name, I don't remember it.
He was like, if I was your grandpa, I would say this and
I'm like, oh, we're going to find out.
He's our grandpa. That was the only thing I was
invested in story wise. Well, how I felt seen by that
old man was at the end of the game, when we're getting all

(01:06:32):
that explanation, the old man isstanding there with us, like
hearing it all. And I was like, I bet that old
man did not even listen to anything.
And then, like the next dialoguemoment, he's like, Will, were
you listening to any of that? What does it all mean?
It's like, yeah, that's the audience surrogate in a way.
Yeah. And then lastly, but maybe

(01:06:54):
leastly most of the time runningthe shop feels like a means to
an end for me. I'm not always enjoying it but I
need the cash for my equipment enhancements.
Additionally, as I upgrade my shop I find it harder to run
instead of easier. Like thieves can show up more
frequently, you eventually have to attend to customers with
questions. Birds, birds birds can interrupt

(01:07:16):
the shopping experience. It it feels like a mild
punishments for progression instead of a reward.
Like we, we get the assistant and that feels like a reward,
but then everything after that doesn't, you know?
And then, well, even the assistant takes a 30% cut.
Yeah, well, if you if you chooseto go to the dungeon and have
her run the shop. I never did that.
And I never did that. So she's just standing there not

(01:07:38):
doing anything. Yeah, she'll sometimes stop a
thief, which is nice, but she's a lot slower than you are.
That never happened for me. I always had to stop my thieves
and a lot of these things will show up without announcement.
There will be this bird after you've upgraded the shop, a bird
will just start flying around inyour shop.
This bird never showed up in thelower levels of your shop, and
you're just supposed to, like, understand what's going on.

(01:08:00):
It's like, why are all these people not shopping?
Oh, it's because there's something in the store.
Oh, it's a bird. OK.
What do I do? I tackle the bird like I would a
thief, I guess. And then people will will stop
and they'll need assistance withitems before they buy them.
That wasn't a thing before the last upgrade.
Yeah. So it's like you just have to
kind of be alert about things. Mechanics in the shop evolving

(01:08:23):
and getting more expansive. Yeah, and additionally, and I
didn't write this down, but I never totally understood when
people entered the shop with thelittle like disguise icon over
their head. I didn't totally understand what
that was. I assumed that it's someone
working for the other retailer in town and they're like buying

(01:08:47):
an item from me to put in that shop.
Was the symbol like a mustache? Yeah.
I think actually what that is isthose are like posh customers
with lots of money. So they're more likely to spend
more money than the average customer.
So they might. They might not like your price
of something expensive, but theywill reluctantly buy.

(01:09:08):
Rather. Than just turn it down was my
understanding. That yeah, that tracks.
OK, so it wasn't a disguise icon.
It was then maybe this. Was that they're fancy.
They're like the Monopoly guy with the mustache in the top
hat, you know? OK, anyways, Moonlighter is an
enjoyable experience where I found myself uniquely motivated

(01:09:30):
by small goals in forging and enhancing my equipment.
I think this game is beautiful and I want to play to collect
and upgrade everything that I can, but I don't think I would
be motivated by the idea of the endless experience of constantly
selling objects that I find in the dungeon.

(01:09:50):
That loop doesn't sound appealing to me in the long term
and I don't really get anything out of the story at all.
But I would play this from scratch again for fun and I'm
officially excited for Moonlighter 2.
I give this a nine point O out of.
Ten. Wow, you liked this a lot more
than I thought you would. I liked it a lot more than I
thought I would, too. And, you know, lately I've been

(01:10:11):
arriving on scores based on where I put it in my backlog
list. And I kind of base it on the
scores around the the games it'snear.
Yeah. And based on where I put this,
at least on vibes today, it's it's in the 9 point O realm,
maybe a low 9 point O, but. Yeah, love it.
I'm so glad you liked it. Yeah, I had not played this

(01:10:33):
before, so I was going into thisfor the first time, just like
you, and I had a good time. But I will say maybe like 80% of
this entire experience is kind of one giant blur to me.
That's not like a terrible thing.
It's just kind of samey. It is.
So that's kind of my general thought going into all my points

(01:10:55):
here. But what I liked, I think this
feels really fulfilling to make your way back to town with a
backpack full of loot. You've successfully filled your
backpack. That is inherently really
rewarding. You've protected all this gear.
You know, if you were to go downin a dungeon, you would lose
most of the stuff in your backpack.
So just making it back with a full backpack or mostly full

(01:11:18):
backpack feels great because nowyou have the freedom to sell.
Any curses on your items get removed.
And now it's just stuff that youcan put in your shop, right?
And I actually really like the speed and the vibe of opening
the shop and putting things up for sale.
I enjoy that process of seeing the customers come in.
They come in quite quickly too. Like the shoppers move decently

(01:11:41):
fast, which I was a little worried about.
I was worried like how long is this loop going to take and you
can sell out a whole inventory in just a few minutes, which is
great. I think that's the perfect
amount to add variety to the pacing.
The other thing I really enjoy is the inventory management.
Like you suspected, like I I think this is a really

(01:12:02):
interesting way that the game asks you to make choices about
what to keep. I think that helps to keep
things interesting. Do I wish I could upgrade my
backpack size? Yes.
That would be such a that. Would be the biggest thing.
Actually later on, if you have other ideas for ways this game
could expand or ideas for Moonlighter too, I would love to

(01:12:23):
hear those. But yeah, generally I just, I, I
like managing an inventory and the game gives us ways to sell
less expensive things while we're in the dungeon a little
bit later on. So it's not like you're
scrapping things. It's not like you're completely
leaving things on the floor and not being allowed to get

(01:12:46):
anything for them. So the game does reward you
still. I really like the recipe and
wish list features where we can go to the blacksmith and we can
look at a piece of, we can look at an armor set or a weapon, we
can wish list it. And then those ingredients for
those equipment items will have a star next to them in our
inventory when we pick them up. And there is a wish list tab in

(01:13:10):
our journal that we can really quickly reference.
And once I understood how to getthere, that was really helpful
for just filtering down what I needed.
I did not need to collect every single item as an ingredient in
this game. A vast majority of things I
could just sell in my shop, and that was kind of a freeing
feeling. I only have a handful of

(01:13:31):
ingredients to look out for to save for the blacksmith and
other things. Otherwise I can just sell, sell,
sell. When I got to right before the
last dungeon, I was at the pointwhere all the equipment items I
needed had the same ingredients and I had all that I needed.
So all I needed from there was just like money.
And that was just like, I can sell everything else, I don't

(01:13:52):
need anything else. Yeah, all of this is going to be
revenue for me that I'm picking up from this point.
I also really like the art styleand the general vibe of Rinoka,
actually the the place that's indisrepair that you slowly see
develop and flourish in small ways.
I like the shop expansions. They're very satisfying to
witness, and I like that the dungeon loop is really

(01:14:14):
digestible, and every loop is also different enough each run
to surprise me. I didn't get to the point in
this game where I thought like, oh, here's this room again.
We just got this room now I'm going to see this room
afterward, right? The game switches up the layout
and which enemies are in which rooms enough that it's hard to
predict what you'll run into. You do understand a formula of

(01:14:38):
like when you go into a room with a big pool of water in it,
you know the boss room is nearby.
There are things like that. But most of the time I'm going
into these dungeons and I don't really know what direction I
should go to find the boss. I don't know what order things
are going to be in. So that's always really nice.
I also really like the soundtrack in this game.
It's this beautiful folklorish set list.

(01:15:02):
It's kind of like upbeat, like campfire songs or maybe like
songs you'd hear in a Tavern in a fantasy story.
Just very pleasant music going on.
Some things I didn't like as much.
I don't feel a strong sense of purpose in making my way through
this game. The the story isn't grabbing me
a ton. Just like you said, I think

(01:15:24):
there's this loop of collecting and selling that is linear,
which is nice and predictable, but it doesn't seem to evolve in
super dramatic ways or super profound ways.
And also sometimes the upgrades to equipment don't feel super
deep. It's just giving you maybe a
little bit more movement speed or a little bit more armor.

(01:15:45):
And I also don't appreciate how if you buy a set of armor and
you upgrade it, and that set of armor is an ingredient for the
next stage of armor, that upgrade is lost.
Yeah, the enhancements don't translate to anything.
You upgrade it. So that took some trial and
error to understand. And then I realized, oh, I've
been wasting some ingredients and money because I could have

(01:16:08):
just waited for this upgrade forthe next armor set and then I
could upgrade that armor set instead of losing the upgrade
for my first armor set. Yeah, for, for me, I needed
those just based on my skill level.
I needed those enhancements in between each big upgrade because
I needed the extra defense because I was taking devs and I

(01:16:30):
couldn't progress. I guess what it does do is it
gives you this marginal next step.
If you don't have the ingredients for that next armor
set because you're not in the right environment yet, you can
still get more defense. I get that.
It's just that I didn't always want to spend that money if I
knew that there was another significant upgrade coming and I

(01:16:51):
would just lose my you. Have to hold your nose to do it.
Yeah, it's, it's kind of sucks in that way, but another thing I
didn't super like is that the trial and error of setting
prices wasn't that fun for me and the supply demand system
didn't seem to matter at a certain point.
If you find, if you find the price that almost anyone will

(01:17:15):
always accept, I found that thatprice just locking in that price
and then never adjusting it is just fine and you'll make plenty
of money. And I think of it as like time
is money in this game. You could spend your time
pettifogging around about pricesand supply and demand and

(01:17:36):
adjusting things and being like just super particular with
adjusting your prices. But I would always think I could
spend time doing that or I couldjust spend time that I would
spend doing that going into the dungeon farming for more stuff
to sell in the shop. So if I know a good average
price that even in low demand situations this item will sell,

(01:17:59):
I should just go back into the dungeon?
So that's what I committed to. I didn't get sucked into the the
setting prices thing and evaluating supply and demand
really at all. Then finally, the combat I found
to be chunky and limited in terms of maneuverability.
You can't attack in eight directions like I would expect.

(01:18:20):
You can only attack upright leftdown and it just feels like
there's this chunky waiting us to it.
You can roll away from things, which feels nice and kinetic
sometimes, but I don't know it you couldn't be so precise with
your moving around in this game.And I would sometimes, you know,

(01:18:42):
be using a bow and arrow and it was sometimes hard to line that
up. You're just shooting in these
straight lines. It just doesn't feel very
dynamic when it comes to combat.So overall I think Moonlighter
is fun while I'm playing it. It doesn't offer a life changing
experience for me. The shopkeeping and dungeon
crawling contrast really well, but I don't know that this combo

(01:19:04):
is greater than the sum of its parts.
I think it's equal to the sum ofits parts.
Whereas in a game like Colts, the Lamb, I think that's an
experience where. All the different elements lift
each other. Up they do, and I I don't know
that I'm feeling that in Moonlighter.
I think each part is done adequately.
See, after a while I could be running through all the dungeons

(01:19:27):
and my goal could be to get through all the dungeons.
And if I've spent all the money on upgrades that I feel like I
really need, I could just use the mirror to sell all my stuff
in the dungeon. Because at a certain point money
be becomes no object. Right.
Yeah. So you can just keep going and
going. It's more about like how long
you're going, your endurance. So I did get addicted to making

(01:19:50):
money and funding upgrades. There were a couple play
sessions where I just played fora lot of hours.
So this game did get its hooks in me.
But again, it's kind of all a big blur.
I'm going to give this a 7 out of 10.
That's about what I guessed. So I did enjoy it.
This is going to be in my big list of like indie games that
I've that I've gotten A7 or higher out of 10 from me.

(01:20:13):
Like it's going to be lower in the list than I thought it might
be. But I'm nonetheless super
excited for Moonlighter 2. I've seen the trailer and it
looks cool. Oh, I think he would really dig
the style. It's a very different aesthetic.
Maybe we can look at that together and react to it.
That might be fun, but actually do you want to end the episode
doing that? That'd be fun before we wrap up.

(01:20:36):
OK, we'll do that. You mentioned the inventory
management and you know, sometimes it's a little
overwhelming. I want to talk about that a
little bit. I was opening a chest sometimes
and to make that decision of what to sell to the mirror, they
give you that little shortcut toopen up the price book, and I

(01:20:56):
would just use that to figure out what's my least valuable
item. Let's just sell that to the
mirror. Were you doing those things?
Were you like doing that level of evaluation?
Not necessarily. I mean, yes, sometimes, but it
would be between like 3 items maybe that I was like, I don't

(01:21:16):
want to hold on to these ones because I found the act of like
looking at the book, the price book, closing the price book,
looking at the next item, opening the price book again.
And just like trying to keep allthose different numbers in my
head at the same time as openingand closing the book wasn't
worth the effort for me. So it was like, OK, what was it

(01:21:37):
that I needed for that upgrade? And then I'll focus on that.
What did I need for any of theseside quests?
I didn't mention side quests. Sometimes you'll get shop
requests and those are kind of fun.
I find those a little bit motivating sometimes.
It'll help me decide between do I want to go to the more
powerful dungeon or do I want togrind some more in the less
powerful dungeon. Real quick, there's a, there's a

(01:21:57):
calendar system, very, very light calendar system where
people will request a certain number of item that you can only
get in one of the dungeons and they'll say, I'll be back in
three days. You better have ten of these
things. And then when they come back,
you can make a a decent amount of cash.
Yeah. So I, I kind of liked those.
I usually didn't need the money that they offered me because
when I got to the point where those were a thing, I was making

(01:22:21):
money. Pretty easily.
A lot, yeah. But anyways, it's it's usually
based more on what don't I need and regardless of unless it was
like super valuable, like one ofthe jottings or one of the
journals, I was like, I'll just sell this.
And then you mentioned the pricebook giving you some clues about

(01:22:41):
a general ballpark for prices. That's something I appreciated
too. Yeah, if it was like my first
item from a dungeon, I was like,I have no idea where to start.
Cuz like even in the journal it'll divide up the list of
things from that region and it'll have like a coin amount.
But I don't know if that coin amount is for the stuff above it
or the stuff that comes below it.

(01:23:03):
Yeah, so I found that demarcation kind of confusing.
I would still generally start around there and sometimes I
would kinda get close but other times I was like giving stuff
away basically cuz I misunderstood it.
Yeah. So you'll get a reaction based
on your prices that clues you into how well you're doing.
And you could sell something that's worth 4000 gold for 10

(01:23:28):
gold and you'll, you'll get likea giant :) reaction.
But that doesn't tell you what the minimum probably should be
for that item. So yeah, honing in, it's
important to look at that price book.
And I did like that for the 1st 2 1/2 dungeons.
And what I ended up doing, the point I got into dungeon three

(01:23:50):
and four especially for is I started looking at the wiki for
this game And I they list out all of the very specific prices
for if something's in high demand, low demand, neutral
demands, how much to set the price for in new game plus
versus new game. And I would just go for the
middle of the road average good price.

(01:24:11):
And I, that saved me a ton of time of just looking at that
price because I, I knew how to do that.
I had done it so many times. I didn't want to put up with it
really. So I that's one way I sort of
cheated. Usually I get, I have like 1
item, one or two items per dungeon where I'm just like sort
of guess and check. And then once I get that set, I

(01:24:33):
can sort of like extrapolate everything else in the list
based on what that was. And that really helped,
especially when I got to the endof, I think the desert.
And I was getting like those journals.
It was just like right away, first try, got the right price
and I was like heck yeah. Nice.
Yeah, that's a very good feeling.
Yeah. It's you get an intuition for a
lot of things. You just go, yeah, this seems

(01:24:55):
like 1000, let's try that. And yeah, I would sometimes try
to push my luck a bit and bump things up by a couple hundred
extra gold, and that was decently fine.
But I mostly just stuck to the same values.
I do appreciate that it saves your last price that you set
when you quick move an item fromyour inventory to the shop.

(01:25:18):
It just like remembers that thatprice.
When you're good, that's super helpful.
You're not like manually typing things in all the time.
That would be. I would have quit.
I probably would have quit. Yeah.
And then it's just like data entry the game now when you're
in the dungeon, do you have a specific favorite weapon or kind
of armor or combat strategy? Like what?

(01:25:40):
What is your dungeoning look like?
So I only tried a few different kinds of weapons.
I think I tried the bow like onetime and didn't love it.
You one of the first ones you get is like a sword that also
has a shield and that was fine for a minute.
I also have like a heavier sword.

(01:26:00):
But the thing that I stuck with after I realized I was like
vibing with it was the gauntlets.
And just like for the for prettymuch after the first dungeon, I
was just like, all right, I'm going hard into gauntlets and
that's what I'm doing. Interesting.
I never once tried the gauntletsor the spear or the big sword.
I just stuck with sword and shield.

(01:26:22):
Yeah, because I just thought, I know this.
I it's kind of what you start with, I think.
And I'm just going to hold on tothis.
I think if I'm not mistaken, thegauntlets offer more hits per
second, like you can attack quicker than any other weapon.
And so I was like, I do like that.
That's what I'm into. Yeah.
You have to get close to enemiesand that especially in the

(01:26:43):
desert with fire enemies. Can I just say I hate that cube
that shoots the little tiny laser but also shoots like an
entire screens worth of lava at its side?
Yeah, that's annoying. That's too.
Much It's doing too many things.That's two enemies worth of
attacks at least. Yeah, I don't like that either.
I I think I assumed gauntlets would require you to get up

(01:27:06):
close and personal so I didn't want to invest in that.
There's only a couple enemies where it's like a really big
deal. That's one of them.
The little tiny electric dudes in the final dungeon.
Yeah, can hit you. Yeah, those are annoying.
Yeah, a lot of rims will have a obstacle or a threat or a trap
that you can't interact with. You have to clear all the

(01:27:27):
enemies and then it goes away. That was interesting.
And then we also have like hidden rooms that we can drop
down into, and some of those I didn't understand the purpose of
what was going on. Like there's a chest in one of
them that you can put items intobut I didn't understand what it
was for. So that's actually the best one
in my opinion. OK, what does it do?

(01:27:48):
So you put the items in that chest, and that chest teleports
the items back to your shop. And so you have all those like.
Clear your inventory. Yeah, and you have like all
those little extra chests just like in your room, apart from
the big one. It dumps it into one of.
Those it into one of those. That's really nice.
Yeah. I I tried putting one thing in
there and I didn't understand what was going on.

(01:28:09):
So good to know. I wish I would have done that at
the beginning. That would have saved me.
Maybe like a run or two? Yeah.
Did you occasionally see like a little gooey room that you could
drop into a gooey? Maybe.
So most of the time it's a little sparkles, right?
You see a little sparkle, right?Sometimes it looks like a splash
of goo. Did that happen for you?
Oh, I don't think so. So this might be DLC stuff.

(01:28:33):
So occasionally there'll be likea little splash of goo for me,
Nice. And I can drop down in there and
it's like a just like an interdimensional, like an extra
mini floor of a dungeon and you fight monsters mostly from that
dungeon, some maybe from another.
And then there's also skeletons.Yeah, I don't think I've had

(01:28:53):
that. Something very similar is that
when you're top level in a dungeon, you'll sometimes see a
manifestation of one of the other dungeons show up.
That's cool that like for one room you get to fight in the
desert instead of the forest. Right, and it's a little bit
like that. It's kind of like that.
And then at the end you'll face one of the mini bosses, but
it'll be like specific to the goo dungeon and some I

(01:29:16):
especially in the desert area, Ifound those to be a lot easier
than the hex or whatever the hexas.
And then you'll get like a special weapon at the end of it
that disappears as soon as you leave the dungeon.
Sometimes it's better than the weapon you have equipped.
Sometimes it's not interesting. So that that saved me a couple
times. OK, that's I think that's a very

(01:29:37):
clear example of stuff that's inthe DLC that I didn't see
because I don't. I wasn't sure.
Yeah, because I don't have the DLC.
I'm guessing that's what that is.
Then there are tools that we getas upgrades as we go to more and
more dungeons. There's the mirror.
There's the thing that lets you go back to town with your
backpack safely, and you can youhave to pay gold to be extracted

(01:30:00):
out, if you will. There's the teleporter, which
brings you back to town, but youalso get to return to the
dungeon where you left off. This is something later in the
game, and that was actually super huge in getting me through
the game faster. Not just because I could resume

(01:30:21):
on level two or three of a dungeon and not have to fight my
way back through the early levels, but because when I would
return to a dungeon, it would reveal the entire map to me.
Which is nuts. That is nuts.
And it felt unintentional. It felt accidental, but I didn't

(01:30:42):
mind. So like now I can see the path
to the boss and I don't have to spend all this time looking
around. So that saved me.
I don't know how much time that saved me, but I mean, that's
great that that's what that does.
I never had the the thought to like, OK, now I'm on the
beginning of floor 3. So me just quickly, you know,
leave and come back. Maybe that would have helped me

(01:31:03):
a lot because most of the time Iwas dying.
I was dying because I was like looking for the boss.
And in most cases I'm going the exact wrong direction every
single branching path. Yeah, because every level gets
bigger with how many rooms thereare.
So which path to go is is harderto tell.
And once I understood that, it showed the whole map upon

(01:31:24):
returning through the portal, I would get to Level 3 and I would
just immediately go to town, sell stuff, then go back.
That's that saved me. I don't know, maybe an hour or
two. I wish I would have done that.
Yeah. So I don't know, that would be a
tip I'd give to somebody, somebody new.
Is there anything else you want to say about equipment, the

(01:31:45):
town, exploring, selling stuff, anything in any part of the loop
of this game? Not really, I did notice that.
Just going off of the topic of these like special items.
I noticed that if you don't haveenough gold to use at least the
smaller teleporter, the smaller return to home button, it will

(01:32:08):
automatically like drop stuff from your bag into that mirror
to get you to the point where you have enough gold.
Because like, I was like panicking.
I was like almost dead. And I was like, go home, go
home, go home. And I saw in the corner like my
stuff in my bag was starting to like disappear.
That's scary at first, I bet, but that's actually a really

(01:32:29):
considerate feature rather than just saying like, no, you can't
go back. I mean I I'll take just
automatically selling stuff. Over because you can't open your
bag while they're enemies active.
No, but you can go back home, which is nice.
Like you can be in the middle ofthe boss fight and just go back
home. That's really nice.
I use that to save my my backpack of stuff a lot of

(01:32:51):
times. Yeah.
OK so before looking at the Moonlighter 2 Early Access
release date trailer from games.com 2025, is there
anything you hope for Moonlighter 2?
I just want to move a little bitfaster, I think.
And then one thing that I would love if that would have been a

(01:33:14):
thing in Moonlighter 1 is if sort of go more Cult of the Lamb
like and remove hazards from thefloor as soon as you clear the
room of enemies. Because I can't tell you how
many times I was running back and forth through finished rooms
and stepping in lava. Yeah, I used to have to watch
out. Yeah, that's fair.

(01:33:36):
Well, I just sent you a trailer for Moonlighter 2 The Endless
Vaults. Let's watch this together and
let's do a quick reaction and then call it.
OK. Does that sound good?
Yeah. OK, I'm ready to play.
Are you? Yeah, give me the countdown. 321
go. It is a different style.

(01:33:59):
Yes, much more modern looking. Oh wow, I mean, it's no secret I
love the pixel art thing. Like that's my jam.
OK. Oh, that solves some of your
issues. And this is definitely more
isometric than top down. Yeah.

(01:34:27):
A lot of the same colors, shop looks very similar.
Like the the weird alien technology?
Yep, still looks cool. We've got traps.
We've got floor traps abound. Laser traps.
OK. And I I mean, the music sounds

(01:34:52):
like it'll probably also be something I don't get tired of.
Yeah, definitely. I like how it's a very different
style visually. Like it almost looks.
I mean it kind of looks cel shaded or something.
Yeah, it's very death Store was the first thing that.
I thought yeah, it's looks more modern than Moonlighter one, but

(01:35:13):
the branding of things like the the colors and some of the
iconography is definitely synonymous with Moonlighter 1,
so it feels. You still have all this green
goo looking stuff everywhere. Will still has his bright white
hair, so all of that's still present.
Yeah. So that comes out in early

(01:35:33):
Access on October 23rd of this year, and I will be interested
in that a lot. So that is our review of
Moonlighter. You can play it on PC, Mac,
Linux, Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Android, and iOS.
Disco Cola rated it a nine. I rated it A7.

(01:35:54):
That's the end of this episode of Underplayed.
You can find more of our episodes at kzm.org/underplayed
and on podcast platforms like Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Our music was composed by Jack Rodenberg.
Our art comes from Oni Mochi. You can also check out our show
notes where you can find and follow us across social media.
Under Plate is on Blue Sky, Instagram and Threads.

(01:36:15):
You can also find my links down below.
And I am at Disco Cola in most of those places as well.
And hey, if you have a question for our upcoming guests, you can
ask them by visiting our Google forum, which you can find on
most of our social platforms andask any questions you might want
answered about our guests, aboutour future games.

(01:36:38):
So yeah, check it out. Next time we will have two more
secret games to review, a discussion with Lucy Blundell of
Kinmoku Games and our featured game will be 1000 times resists
A narrative sci-fi adventure developed by Sunset Visitor.
Until then, everyone keep on play.

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083 - Elsie, Gemporium, & Moonlighter

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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;}083 - Elsie, Gemporium, & Moonlighter