0135 Whiskers, Wizards and Wands with Sweet & Power Sauce

Today we have on two members of Sweet & Power Sauce were kind enough to come on and talk with us about their current project Whiskers, Wizards and Wands. Doug and Christine are husband and wife and part of the Sweet & Power Sauce dev team. Dan met the them at the Pittsburgh Gaming Expo where their game was met with rave reviews and he could not wait to get them on the podcast to talk about their hand drawn cozy adventure.

Their upcoming game due in Spring of 2026 has a demo dropping at noon the day of this episode's release and will also have their Kickstarter Campaign launch at the same time.

The couple also talk about how games like Tunic, Noita, and Stardew Valley inspired the vibes they were going for with Whiskers.

We will have a bunch of quests to earn XP related to the game's Steam and Kickstarter expansions happening today, be sure to check them out.

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Episode Transcript

(00:09):
Channel 3 is the future. Welcome crew to one of your 3A

(00:30):
Channel 3 podcast where it's going to be real weird tonight
because normally when I talk to developers, Ray's not here
because these are, these are daylight hours normally.
But alas, we're we're doing our normal recording slots.
So Ray gets to jump in for a developer chat for the first
time in like since we did the first one probably.
This is like this is popcorn rocket.

(00:50):
Oh yeah, we did. We did 2:00.
You got to be there for that's right.
That was that was back in the day, the early day popcorn.
I still have to go back and beatthat game, that thing.
That was a tough one. That was a tough one, but I
loved. It but anyway, that's the well,
I'm sorry, what was that? This is what you get when when
people have day jobs and. Yeah, it's exactly.

(01:11):
That's. Exactly correct.
That's right. Yes, yes, we hit the we hit the
bingo card. Guest talked before we
introduced. Yes, I love it.
We could never. We have an awesome guest
tonight. It's 1/2 of sweet and power
sauce Doug is here to talk about. 1/2 of the couple of

(01:32):
sweet and power sauce. There's more sweet and power
sauce than that, but we had we had just the the.
One couple, the couple sweet andpower sauce is here.
Doug. Doug, welcome.
We're glad to have you here tonight.
Thank you, happy to be here. I, I have to ask right away, I
would say because Dan you Dan will get into it.
How you, how you guys all met? But I, I've got to ask about

(01:52):
this about the company name. Well, we're, we're, we're making
a, a game game development company and we need a name for
it. And we get sweetened power
sauce. How?
How do we get this one? You know, that wasn't really
that difficult to come up with. I absolutely love Chinese cake
out and sweet and sour sauce, but it's more of like the kind

(02:13):
of game we want. We, we want to have a game
that's, you know, sweet, cute, wholesome, but also not, not
just that we want, we want people to be able to think.
I, I, I really think there's some good space for, you know,
allowing people to be creative and have good thoughts, but also

(02:37):
wrapped up in the ice cube package.
I mean, I'll, I'll say this before Dan starts talking about
it. I've, I've watched the, the
unofficial, the official unofficial cinematic trailer
that we have on Channel 3 with, with the voice effects and
everything. I, I've watched it like 4 times
already. Because it, it's, it, it is,
it's very, it's very endearing and very like, oh, this is, this

(03:01):
is really cool and, and, and like really creative and put
together and I'm and I'm here singing along.
We. We might be have a low budget,
but we do not have a low effort like we're doing what we can.
No, you, you absolutely do not have a low effort, which will be
a perfect place for us to segue into the into the game.

(03:22):
We're here to properly discuss. We will go through the three, of
course, as we do with everybody,but we're here to talk about
whiskers, Wizards and wands. That's those aren't the three.
That's just the name of the game, Whiskers, Wizards and
wands. I, I've not talked about this
with my editor wife yet because there's no Oxford comma.
That'll be a discussion for another day.
If you ever have a podcast with her, it's a trap and she'll want
to understand no Oxford comma. But that's, that's, that's not

(03:44):
what we're here for. But I, I'm going to go back
though first. So we, we met a week ago.
We had, we had booths at the Pittsburgh Gaming Expo.
We had the independent developerrow there.
And you know, your, your, your booth certainly caught my eye to
to say the least, because you you guys were littered with

(04:05):
colorful, beautiful, hand drawn characters that I I'd be
frankly, you you mentioned Christine, who, who may be
jumping in later, was literally drawing characters.
You guys were going to be scanning in for the game there.
But you, you had AAI mean you. You described it as more than a

(04:25):
demo at the, at the Expo itself,but you brought a copy of the
game there with you with, with the whiskers, whizzers and
wands, a cozy adventure game with heavy puzzle elements.
And I'll, I'll just say my son played quite a bit of it.
And that was he, he said it was his number one of the, the three
demos in particular that were running around there.
But of the, of all the games, hewas the most fun he had through

(04:47):
the course of it. But I, you know, just, I just
want to kind of start off and just say, like, you know, tell
us about the game. Let's, let's do that.
I'll, I'll, I'll stick with thatfirst.
That's so exciting to hear. I I I remember him having a good
time about it. Yeah, he's not a, he's not a,
he's not always an outward smiler.
He is. He is generally not always
outwardly emotional, but he he was having a good time.

(05:09):
Yeah, let's see. Yeah.
It's a a whimsical adventure game.
We have this fantastical world and you're going through doing
puzzles, fighting bad guys and finding these pieces of your
wand. And the, the main mechanic is

(05:31):
swapping between these differentWongs and, and customizing your,
you know, probably hundreds of of possible combinations for the
spells you can do. And the whole world has this
papery aesthetic to it because it is literally hand drawn on

(05:52):
paper. And we, we bring all that in and
you were talking about the the cinematic earlier.
Yeah, it's like little paper characters on popsicle sticks.
But like, that's how we animate the the characters in the game
too. We're we're just moving around
their little paper cut out guys are hopping around and so cute.

(06:16):
Yeah, stop, stop Everything you're doing right now again
that that cinematic trailer is linked directly on the game's
page. Yeah, Ray mentioned we got the
the sweet and sour sweet and power sauce page, but also the
the whiskers Wizards in Wan pageis already active.
They're tied to steam. We'll we'll come back and and
talk about that. But like, yeah, you go back to
like early South Park's probablythe thing that people will know

(06:38):
more than like I go back to old Pi am old.
So I could go back to old PBS shows where they had like the
paper drawn characters that thatwere that South Park was like
basically ripping off that that style.
But like it's so much it's so much cleaner the the animation.
There's so much more color to itthen then those.

(06:58):
And also like I, I will say the most distinct slime since dragon
quests or dragon warrior, whatever you want to call it,
depending on the time. But like the slime enemies are
so cool how they're animated andthe way that they move and like,
OK, yeah, it's a, you know, it's, it's anything, you know,
mythical inspired or, or like, you know, the, the DND adjacent,

(07:21):
the all the, the high fantasy stuff.
Like you're going to have a slime character.
But like so many over the last 40 years have just been like,
OK, we're going to do a variant of what, what Dragon Quest is
like locked in is the slime. And yours is like way more
expressive. You gave it like like like these
giant mouth animations and things like that, that like make
it look it, it all looks very, it's, it's very unique in how

(07:45):
all of it looks because also theworld you've rendered is like a
full 3/4 ISO, like not paper animate.
It's a not paper animated ISO world.
It's it's like 2 1/2 D but like the opposite of most 2 1/2 D
It's a fully 3D game but the assets are are 2D flat images in

(08:12):
there. Go go, please.
Please. Yeah, and you know, we're,
we're, it takes so much extra time to, to illustrate this
stuff. My, my wife is our artist and
she, she's done some children's books, she's done other

(08:36):
illustration type stuff. So this is when, when we were
discussing, you know, what art direction we wanted to pivot the
game towards, 'cause it was we, we started with pixel art and it
was just looking really, really generic, which, you know, it's
not bad. I like that look, but we wanted

(08:56):
to stand out. It's good you made.
I'm just going to jump in now and say it's good you made that
decision as like there have onlybeen more and more games moving
into that space too, whether it's independent or like the
whatever the the Elliott Adventures of Elliott,
Millennium Tales adventures, like even Squaresalge is like

(09:17):
this is their house style now for half of their games.
So it's something to help you stand out now too.
Yeah, and it's, it's works really well for us because, you
know, she she's a, a, a paintingstructure.
The the, the traditional mediumsare her bread and butter.
So like this is really where shethrives at.

(09:39):
So this is this game is not justwhat we're wanting to make, but
it's it's the right game for us to make trying to find the the
skill set that we have that we can bring that maybe other
groups wouldn't be able to. So let's take a step back and

(10:02):
talk about the genesis of like. How did this all come together?
Were, you know, you, your team, you, you collectively decided
like a we're going to make a game.
We're going to we're going to form a development studio.
We're going to to really put this thing on paper and really
do it. Like what?

(10:22):
How did that all happen before you even got to like, here's the
game we're going to do? Or like did that all kind of
form this Stew together? Like what?
How did that all play out? So I got into making my own
games because I have the, the creative bug where anything I
enjoy I want to participate in. And so I, I was doing game jams.

(10:45):
It started off as like a, hey, on my birthday, this is what I
want to do. Let's, let's spend the weekend
making a game jam. And it's turned into like a
couple a year and it's four or five a year.
And, and next thing you know, you have, you have, you do like
30 game jabs 'cause it's fun. But as, as we're going through

(11:05):
this, you know, we're meeting our favorite people to work
with. Whenever you're doing a game
jam, you can usually join a discord group and, and find a
group 'cause it's, it's a lot totry and make a, a finished thing
on your own in such a short timeframe.
But we found our composer that way.

(11:29):
Jamie, There's, there's six of us in in the group, by the way,
And he, he knew a programmer that he worked with before and
you know, I well and. One of the teams like your was
was your childhood friend that like you reconnected with for
this kind of is. Is that what happened with one?

(11:51):
Of the the he was there at the booth with us.
Colin is, is our main engineer for Whiskers at this point.
And yeah, we went to, we knew each other from like elementary
school age. And he, he's the one who

(12:11):
actually got me into the idea that people make games.
And you can be one of those people, you know, So we, we all
dig a, we got a yogis from indiegame Academy.

(12:33):
They're they're a big discord group that does things mostly
education focused for indie developers.
And they were sending out a hey,we're going to try and be a
publisher this year, submit a game.
And maybe we'll, we'll, if we like your team and we think
you'll succeed, maybe we'll try and help publish you.

(12:56):
And they're more of a they they're providing, you know, a
lot of direction and learning opportunities, training type
stuff, resources. But their goal is to help us
found our own studio. And we're doing a lot of the

(13:19):
legwork ourselves too. So we did one last jam, all six
of us together. We, we, we were feeling
confident about doing the games,but we wanted to act like a
marketing and business person along with us and a level
designer and decide to to all going in together for it and we

(13:40):
were accepted into their program.
How did you decide that this wasthe direction you were going to
go as far as making, you know, OK, that that's one thing.
We're going to make a game like that's that's great.
And like, it's one thing for youto I mean, there have been a lot
of great games like Celeste comes to mind of like that was a
game jam that just they, they continue to flesh out.
And like there have been a lot of games that like you, you see

(14:02):
playable demos and even in Celeste they buried the, the,
the the original game jam version of Celeste is in Celeste
like hidden in an Easter egg. So you see like a play, You
know, you can put playable gamesout a short period of time, but
it's one thing to like, say I'm going to you have something
playable versus like, OK, here'shere's the direction we're going

(14:22):
to go and start running in that direction.
Like, how did you settle on likethe aesthetics and the visuals
and the the gameplay and. So this is our this is our
second game on on that will be on steam here.
Our first one's called Eloings. Like it was a game jam game that

(14:43):
we like well enough to finish itup.
And I thought it would be, you know, maybe a couple month
effort and nine months later finally gagging out.
And that whole thing, the game itself I think is very nice.
It's very short. You can beat the whole thing in
like 40 minutes. I, I think our demo actually for

(15:04):
whiskers, swizzards and longs might be longer, but with
Ellen's Light, you know, I didn't really know the right way
to, to market anything. I didn't know about some good
code architecture type stuff. I'd never worked on a big

(15:25):
project before. And by the time we were done
with it, I was a little bit sickof working on it, but it got out
it it has mostly positive reviews.
We, we at the end of that decide, OK, well, sheesh, I
think we're ready for a, a bigger project here.

(15:49):
What do we want to work on? And the whole time I was working
on that game, it's like you're not allowed to work on other
games. If you have other great ideas,
you write them down and you comeback to it.
So you avoided attention span issues?
Yeah. That's.
True, it gets in trouble. Yeah, we we have our 2nd guest.

(16:12):
Hi, welcome. It's the.
Artist Yeah, the the the. Which one is the more important
one you get to? You ever have that battle?
I'm just kidding. Do not, do not do that.
Do not. I'm not.
I'm just kidding. Don't actually.
Respond It's really kind of weird.
I am a genre list. I make whole games by myself.
It's just that the five other people I have with me can do

(16:36):
those the their parts better than I can.
So like, yeah, I can write music, but like our composer can
write better music. So Christine is Christine has
arrived and aforementioned I I already talked to you up that
that like that. What caught my eye about your
booth before anything was you just sitting and drawing the
actual characters and artwork that you just you said you guys

(17:00):
are just literally going to be scanning in.
So there's just like this pile of drawings.
And also again, I Ray Ray's tired of hearing it from me.
I'm just happy when games have color and we remember games are
allowed to have color and. Color is very nice.
And and we're in this like I. Love vibrant color?
We're, we're also so it's funny because I, I go to PGXI set up

(17:22):
in the morning before it starts and I come back for the, the
kickoff and like the room's darkupon my return outside of like
the lights of the pinball machines across from us.
But alas, even with that, their,their, their booth was still
colorful because of the pile of artwork that was actively being
worked on and sitting there. So, so I, I, I checked it up.

(17:44):
You're what's that? Sorry.
We bought a lamp so she can keepon drawing.
Yes, that you, you, you needed it.
That was undoubtedly you needed that.
So, so we're just talking about like, you know, we, we, we went
through kind of talked about the, the generalities of the
game, but I, I was just kind of talking through and, and what
prompted making a game and, and Doug talked about, you know,

(18:08):
your, your other works and illustrations and artwork.
Did have you done animation before or is this like a first
like full foray in animation foryou?
There's been some dabbling on our previous game that we did
Ellens Light, that was pixel art.
I did the animation for that, but obviously pixel art operates
pretty differently. And drawing every individual

(18:31):
frame of it? Yeah, sure.
Especially by yourself? Sure, sure, sure.
Yeah, well, and to be fair, in our game, even though things are
animated, I'm actually not doingtoo many different frames per
guy. A lot of the animation Doug is
able to do, like all the cute little squishy jumps and stuff
that the character does, he's actually making that happen on

(18:53):
his end. So I just need to provide
sprites for things like changes in facial expression for our
mobs, sometimes the way they're moving, opening and closing
their mouths, things like that. And when you see the point,
you're. Gonna see it's not that simple.
You Sprite go a long way it. Was when people see the game

(19:14):
like it's you're making it soundoverly simple, but so you know
what the two of you were doing because it's I.
I like I already appreciate the change your appearance to fit
your mood part I I I'm big and II'd like my character to look
differently. Ray.
Ray, I'm all in on that. Ray is firmly anti base skins

(19:34):
for characters he he wants I. Always want the, I always want
the alternate colors. Yeah, it doesn't.
It doesn't matter what it is he he wants, he wants the alts.
So. So yeah, I know we're just
talking like so so you how so when did the decision come in?
Like this is the game that you're going to make.
That's that's really what it's coming down to, I guess.
So post post Eloin's light and you're you're OK, it's time.

(19:57):
We're going to we're going to dothis thing like how did you did,
did the team come together? Did you of the six of you and
say like, here's what we're going to do and kind of talk it
out or what what what happened? We, we had a big team meeting
with a big spreadsheet with all the ideas and we we gave them
ratings and like how easy we thought they'd be.

(20:17):
How interested people were in the particular concepts.
How sellable it might be? So it, it was something that we
felt was within the scope that we could accomplish within the
time frame we wanted and that everybody on the team was
excited to do parts of it for 'cause we definitely had some

(20:42):
ideas where like maybe one person really loved the concept
for the game, but the others were like, I'd work on it if
that's what we choose, but like I'd be a lot more excited.
I know, like art wise, there were some that I was like, I'm
not feeling quite as much like I'll do the art, but I'm not
going to be as excited to sit down and draw things in that

(21:03):
world as I would in this world. So that played a big factor.
Honestly, a huge part of it did wind up being like, what of
these ideas, which is the one that fits our team the best?
You know, we have skills in these areas.

(21:26):
Of course, you know, we didn't have, we, we threw out a 3D game
initially and we later on down the line just sort of scrapped
it because, you know, Whiskers Wizards and Longs used to be a
2D pixel art game. That's what we thought when we
started. And now it's a 3D traditional

(21:50):
art game. And so we we did have to throw
out a lot of work. I mean, we completely changed
game engines. Yeah, yeah.
It wasn't Unity. And now we we've switched to
Godot. So what?
What made you say we're draftingthe was it just like, OK, the,

(22:11):
the you wanted the unique look? Was it there are too many of
them that are that are appeared Cause like I, I, I kind of said
like that's the house style for half a square, you know, Square
Enix now. I was trying to communicate to
our team the vibes that I wantedthis game to have.
It's, it's silly. It's it's fun.
But like, the characters aren't silly.
They're like totally serious, you know?

(22:33):
About what they're doing. About what they're doing.
And so in order to communicate this, I, I made a car a, a
construction paper, silly littledoll like video, and it just
really resonated with people. Yeah, yeah.

(22:55):
So he did it thinking I'm just going to be silly.
I just want to get across the the the aesthetic, like the
whimsy that I want the game to feel.
This is whimsical. It can't be.
Yeah, And everybody just kind ofloved it.
It's like, you know what? What if, like, hear me out, What
if we actually lean into this paper thing a little bit more?
Because while we really liked the mechanics of the game that

(23:17):
we were working with, I feel like it just always felt like it
was kind of missing something. Things felt a little flat.
Well. And, and we were, we were faking
a 3D ish look with 2D stuff, which is not easy to do.

(23:37):
And I wanted to add some lighting stuff.
And boy, is it so difficult to fake that.
And as a as a test, I just made this little 3D environment.
It's like boom, the lighting works like it.
It calculates everything on its own.
Yeah. And I don't know, I, it was, so

(23:57):
the main reason we had initiallygone with pixel art for the game
is just because our previous game had been pixel art.
So we're like, OK, well, we havesome experience with that.
We'll keep going with it. But I, I had in the back of my
head like, I prefer doing traditional art over digital
art. It's what I feel more
comfortable with. It's what I do for my day.

(24:18):
And it's beautiful again, to be,to be clear, people go look at
it. It's beautiful.
It's it's, yeah. Thanks.
So I'm like, I like doing traditional, but there was this
kind of thing of like, OK, but can we actually make all the art
for a game traditionally? And so we are like, OK, let's do
a game jam just to test some things.

(24:41):
We're going to test the 3D isometric look.
We're going to test traditional art.
So we did a whole game jam whereit was just this short cozy
storybook game called An Autumn Tale, and I hand painted all the
art for that game so it was all acrylic on canvas.
It's. It's on itch.

(25:02):
That was like heroic effort on her part.
Yeah, it was like 60. Some paintings.
In two weeks 2. Weeks.
Yeah, and. She's painting a game.
It was crazy and we just got such positive feedback from
people from that game jam. Like people just loved the vibes
of it and we're like, OK, we're on to something here, like and

(25:26):
so we decided, you know, OK, let's bring this in with the
game that we're wanting to make now that we know that we can
pull it off with the skills thatwe have, that people really like
the look and the feel of this. And it seems to have a little
bit more warmth than heart to it.
Though I did decide to switch over to alcohol markers instead

(25:47):
of acrylic paints because paintsand canvases take up a lot of
space and they're very expensive.
They are, but it also it this looks cool.
Don't worry. Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm sure the I I
the acrylic would probably look wonderful too.
But the the the marker look of it looks so cool in the 3D
environment on the paper. It's it's I, I I love it.
So take that, take that for whatit's worth.

(26:11):
Yeah, no, they're, they're yeah,they're the fancy markers.
But yeah, I and we're like everystep of the way it's like, OK,
how can we learn more into paper?
Like how can we make this look paper?
I'm like, OK, so as you're walking through the world, like
I want our decorations to look like it's a little pop up book.
Like, so we don't just have likerandom environmental stuff here.

(26:31):
It's all like nice little flat things, like you opened up a
card and you're walking through.We wanted to make sure the
blocks were all textured like paper and that when you defeat
an enemy they kind of like turn to cardboard.
They lose their their ink turn to cardboard before they fall
over the the health bar. I I took a crumpled up piece of

(26:56):
paper, snipped it into a bar shape and slowly rolled it up
and took photos of it. So are the health part in the
game is just photographs of a piece of paper?
Yeah. All right, so I, I want to ask
one more kind of general thing about the game.
So I, I was just again, my, my son was the one playing the game

(27:19):
live in person there. And you guys were, were first of
all, very, very kind with him ashe's not, he's not always the
most receptive and individual himself.
And that's the story for anotherday.
But you, you're really kind of encouraging him and talk him
through like trying different wands and elements and trying
different things in the game. So the the one piece of it is

(27:41):
how are how are you changing allthese elements and not breaking
the game? Well, that's.
Always. That's always amazing because
like the stuff I'm watching ableto be switched and flipped and
like try different things that it, there are multiple paths
that are going to work and my brain shuts down.
Like now I'm, I'm a dumb caveman.

(28:03):
I can bang two rocks together. That's the end of, you know,
give me, give me the controller and I'll, I'll take it from
there. But you know, you're having to
put a lot of effort in to put all these elements in, which is
really cool and kind of making it unique for different
playthroughs almost effectively.So the the goal of the puzzles
at least, is to each have some multiple options for how to

(28:26):
solve it. I know one of them that's in the
demo, an optional one. We make the hard ones optional.
You can, you can either, you know, create a rock and drop a
gong of pressure plate, or you can go through this more
difficult jumping part to get tothat pressure plate and just

(28:48):
stand on it. You know, that works too.
Obviously you can't do that, at least at the beginning as much
because you need to have a very kind of set tutorial to teach
people how to how to do stuff. But making making the Wang
system is was just a blast because, you know, we we are

(29:13):
setting up the rules and sometimes we get surprised and
in how they play out. And we're we're taking pretty
relaxed scangs on it. Like a little bit of game
breaking is OK. Yeah, like this isn't like a
hyper competitive multiplayer. Well, yeah, as long as it

(29:33):
doesn't crash the game, it's good, yeah.
Yeah. And I mean to be fair, as we've
added some mechanics then along the way, you know, there have
been hiccups that then we get worked out.
And luckily, you know, by the time people are seeing it in the
demo, we have the one functionality pretty good.
But I think we always wanted there to be this little element
of people feeling kind of cleveras they're discovering the

(29:56):
things they do with their wand and maybe wondering in the back
of their heads, like, oh, did the developer realize that I
could do something like this? Did I break the game?
And it's like, no, you didn't, but we want you to feel like you
are. Couple things to rundown.
So this podcast is dropping on October 15th.
We timed this out a week and a half ago.

(30:17):
We talked about it and we timed it out.
This will work out perfectly because that is the day the demo
for the game drops. So you can go to Steam as you
listen to this and go, go play it.
So yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, wait, go do it.
But you're also, you're also doing a Kickstarter because this
is a lot of blood, sweat and tears and, and, and a lot of
effort to, to tell us Kickstarter goes live the same

(30:38):
day goes live on October 15th, right.
So what? What are the plans Kickstarter
wise? We are hoping to raise some
additional money. Like I said, we don't have a
huge budget. It would be.
It's so hard to stand out in thegames industry when 30 or so

(30:59):
games get released today and every month there's probably a
few real good ones. Easily, yes.
Yeah, yeah. So.
So the Kickstarter is really to help us be able to bring the
level of Polish that we want to have to our game and to help
increase the visibility just, you know, make our voice a

(31:21):
little bit louder in a pretty full market, so.
Do you like to get a piece of your artwork for the right
donation? That's the, that's what I'm
trying to. Find out.
Well, we have some good ones. Some of the the tiers in our
Kickstarter, we, we have some like limited number tiers, one
of which you can have your own cat made into a custom playable

(31:46):
skin in the game. So you can play as your own cat.
And then we also have a top tierthing, I think it's called the
Wizard of Highest Culture, whereI will do a acrylic painting pet
portrait of one of your pets as well as make a custom playable
skin. And that one's not limited to

(32:06):
cats. So if you have a bearded drag
and you want to play as and get a painting of you can do that
this. This is this is great 'cause
she's actually very practiced atthis for her from her day job,
and we have a portrait of each of our two dogs and our cat on
our mantle. I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna yank

(32:29):
the ball away here for a moment and I'm just gonna say now
people, this is the kind of Kickstarter you should be
supporting. I have been increasingly
frustrated with that particular platform because of their
consistent allowances of long established companies using the
platform and abusing it by spending a metric ton of money

(32:51):
before a Kickstarter goes live and spending more on marketing
than probably you guys are trying to raise as your total
project. So don't so, so forgive me,
listen and I love I love all games, but listen people, this
is where your Kickstarter money should be going.
Kickstarter like I I'm happy you're getting money That's

(33:11):
great, but like don't forget whyyou started.
This is the stuff that Kickstarter is supposed to be
for. That's great that the the
company has been around for 20 years and has published 20 games
or, you know, 50 board games or whatever is is there, but no go
go actually support something you're helping to kick start,
please. And the tiers sound fun.
That's the that's the other fun part about Kickstarter.

(33:33):
Like, you know, there's something, there's something fun
with the tiers that are. That are there are some
Kickstarter exclusive outfits that you can get that you can
change Juniper into in the game?We got 1 based on Nean Cat, so
I'm pretty proud of Rainbow Pastry Cat, yeah.

(33:53):
I don't know. I don't know.
Yeah. That's that's, that's a good,
that's a good name for it. There's also a greetings cat.
So, so again, the 50th, so we'llhave activities on the site.
Go, go wish list, go to the Kickstarter, play the demo.
I'm going to ask one final question about the game.

(34:13):
And for each of you, what is your, what's your one favorite
thing in the game? Like?
What's the what's the one thing you're like?
This is this is my favorite part.
Is it weird if I say the dash I I the the player?
Control. No, that's that's not weird at
all. You have you.
Have aside from the skids, you have raised attention by saying
the dash I. Promise you I can dash.

(34:33):
Yeah, I don't know. I just.
That's a good answer. Why it was one of the?
First things that you have to doand do right.
And it, it hasn't really changedsince say, I added it.
And so it's just been in there for a long time and just very
satisfying. For me it's probably the amount

(34:54):
of horrible cat puns that I've put into the game just made.
Us that just. Made us so much fun.
Give us, just give us one. We need a taste.
Give us, give us, give us a taste.
Well for one, just to start, allof the cat characters in the
game come from the land with thedark element and they live in
the catacombs and they teach magic at the Academy.

(35:18):
Nice. Perfect.
But I mean, obviously Juniper isa character.
We have Professor Mutin and their student Paula.
Perfect, SO. Yeah, it's it's all, it's all
cat puns. As, as I make clear, the
artwork's already my favorite part.
So that's I, I love the, I love the, again, the, the ISO view, I

(35:42):
love the, the paper, I love the,the animation itself.
I, I'm excited. So people go today is the day.
If you're hearing this, that means you have access to it.
Go forth and do it, do the thing.
And again, you know, Joel, our our founder, he's based in
Cincinnati. So there's let's just go go
support Ohio. Ohio needs the help.
It'll just make Ohio make Ohio feel good.

(36:04):
OK, It's that's fantastic. Go help Ohio.
This is, you know, this is a, a passion project.
We have a lot of passion for it and not a lot of funding.
But, you know, with the, the, the game will exist in some
form. It's just it'll be a better form

(36:27):
with with help and funding, you know?
Yeah. Go do it.
That's again, that's the beauty of the Kickstarter.
You can you can support it earlyand and be ready for the
finished product and make it a little make it a little better,
get a little something for it. All right, well, again, just go
to C3 dot GG sweetened power sauce.
That'll take you. You'll find whiskers, Wizards
and wands. We have it linked right to your

(36:47):
steam page. The kickstarters on the
sweetened power sauce there. So everything's all all linked
together. Your your website.
I'll make sure you already. I didn't have cause stinking
steam didn't have elowinds lighttied to tied to sweetened power
sauce. It's stupid how they have it
organized sometimes that. That was my that was publishing

(37:08):
to my personal name, except of the sweet Powersault.
Yeah, it listed that as, it listed you, your, it listed you
as the developer, but it lists sweet and sour Powersource as
the publisher. But that's the whatever that I
don't care. We'll we'll have that squared
away. That's the important.
That's why we do what we do behind the scenes to make sure
that's all connected. So you can see that too.

(37:30):
But I, I I know Segway because we.
I'm sorry I'm I found a little alittle animation here to I'm
pretty sure showing the dash I could tell you I.
Told you he would be. You had him in dash.
He had to go find the dash animation I told you he was in.
I'm going to be counting how many squares I move per dash.

(37:54):
I mean, because I almost never use the dash when I'm playing,
but I'm also infamously terribleat anything that resembles A
dumping puzzle, so it. Looks like it looks like 3
squares. I'm kind of looking at it here.
That's the He's cat. Looking out already I'm looking.
Outside it's a great, it's a great looking dash.
I think you talked about it because the cat squishes in to

(38:18):
like dash through and it kind ofopens up again.
And, and yeah, satisfying bloop sounds.
Yeah, there, there will be speedrun strikes in the game, whether
or not I put them in there as a different question, but.
Oh, you hit, you hit. Another problem for us
collectively. So oh boy, you put a timer on

(38:40):
that. It's going to get real ugly real
quick, so. I'm just looking at it.
All right, there you go. I'm just watching a little the
the little clips on on the steampage.
I'm taking this back now, Ray. I'm taking this back, Ray.
I told you you'd have him a dash.
This is what happens. You bring up dashes to him and
dashes and skins. There's the two ways you're
great looking. Back it's a great looking dash.
So one of the things we do when we have these conversations, we

(39:03):
still talk three games. You know, our normal episode
format, We we talk with gamers about three games.
When we talk with developers, wetalk three games.
And you, you brought up three that I, I think there's
inspiration in in your game, butalso just probably your personal
history tied into it. And the first one is, is tunic.
And I'm, I'm scared, I'm now scared about whiskers because of

(39:26):
it. I, I because you know, it's,
it's a game that brings you in with the, it, it brought me in
with legends of Zelda notes. And I'm like, oh, it's like
linked to the past and like, it looks so cute.
Look at it. And then I suffered a lot more
than I thought I was going to playing that game.
There was there was much fun when.
We read the tags. It's like, oh, cute isometric

(39:47):
fox. Dark Souls.
Yeah. They're both like, really just
yeah. It's less of a stretching to say
like Paulo Knight's a Dark Soulsgame that they just hate under
colorful animate. No, no, this is like no tunic.
Yeah, no tunic's in that category also and and probably
more so because of just like. The the elements of what they
did with the language and the manual and like we don't get, we

(40:11):
don't get game manuals anymore, but that game made sure you got
one and made sure you better useit too.
But I you you brought this up asyour first, the first game you
wanted to bring up Tunic. Yeah, well, I he has some really
tricky combat. I've got I always put it on the
the like really easy settings. I've never played it as

(40:33):
expanded. Story mode is there for a
reason. I just did normal but it's you
suffer enough on normal I promise trust.
Me enjoy games how you want themto be enjoy, but I I really like
their their art style. They the simplicity of their low

(40:56):
Poly little guys, the the well chosen visual effects and the
way that they can use their isometric camera angles for good
puzzles. Is is is pretty peak as far as
I'm concerned. Good puzzles.
Well, well put. I they they did to mess with

(41:18):
you. In some circumstances, yes, But
good. Good for puzzle, yes.
But yeah, I I I also really liked how they were able to tell
a pretty good cohesive story without hardly any English words
at all. No, it's just like lines and

(41:41):
gibberish that you start to translate and and turn into a
story. That's where the that's where
the dark Soul, like the combat isn't like Dark Souls
necessarily, but like that's thepart that is like Dark Souls
like no, you have to find the story.
It's not just like, OK, and we used to get, we used to get
manuals that gave you an 8 page description of like what SEM
I'm, I'm playing Metroid Dread right now.
Like you used to get a manual told me 8 pages about what

(42:01):
Metroid was about. We don't get that anymore.
So you just had these games likeyou got to figure out the story
and like that was important to the people making Tunic.
How did, how did you find the game?
First of all, like how did you wander into Tunic?
Oh, probably watching like GDC talks or something from the from

(42:24):
the developers. I I walked a lot of those.
Yeah, so it, but it so it's a game that's that's there.
And again, like they, they knew colour, they knew that, but they
wanted to make sure, they want to make sure there was a it is a
lot longer than links in the past for me, but of course also
links in the past. I just play blindfolded now.
But so, So what? What caught you such a good job?

(42:48):
Of encouraging exploration because you know it like right
when you start you, you are sat next to this giant golden double
doors. It's like this is clearly
important. How do how do I open them?
And you just wander around and figure it out.
And you just wander from place to place signs that you sort of

(43:11):
understand what's going on with some of the signs, some of the
signs you don't. And like, am I going to go into
the woods and die or am I going to am I going to take a long way
around something that was that was the other piece of it.
Like, OK, it's more rewarding togo the hard way, but is it?
But what am I going to get out of it the easy way?
I it's it's all sorts of things with that.
So, Christine, did you play thisone at all or did did the?

(43:34):
I've I haven't played it myself.I've been I've watched while he
plays a bit and when our kids attempted to.
Oh no. So I I was just there for the
vibes and a good time. I didn't have to be stressed.

(43:57):
No, it it it undoubtedly it it undoubtedly did.
That is, is there anything you like took from it specifically
like that that your games you want to have the like the vibe,
the feel, the the challenge, thepuzzle, the options, like what
do you? What do you?
Why did this come up as part of this conversation is kind of
what I'm trying to figure. Out XX combat was pretty well

(44:21):
tuned. I don't want that in our game
exactly like I. I think it's really more of the
visual style of it. Yeah, the combat's very precise.
You don't have a lot of options.Yeah, swing sword make happen.
Yeah, we we really like the aesthetic and the vibes, but we
kind of wanted our gameplay to better match with the aesthetic

(44:43):
and the vibes. Less pain is what you're saying?
Yeah, less suffering, less pain.Yeah, yeah.
We we want it to actually feel kind of cozy as well as look
that way. And I I like their world
building too. They have some really
interesting creatures and characters there and you you get

(45:04):
to discover it as you go. Exploration is definitely
something that we really like, and we like encouraging people
to find little nooks and crannies and secrets and
encourage the Luke Goblin in allof you well.

(45:25):
The second game on this list is the least, I'll say the the
least cozy of of everything we we talked about tonight.
I actually oh, is it? Is it Noita?
Noita, Yeah. Noita.
So that one was a very specific inspiration for us.
They we have a customized Wong system.

(45:50):
Noita has a customized Wong system.
Noita's Wong system is pretty, pretty complex.
They kind of make it optional ina way.
Like you don't, you don't have to interact with it that much if
you don't want to. At least most people don't until

(46:11):
they're like pretty familiar with the game itself and just
don't die instantly whenever they play.
But I wanted to, to take the idea the, the, the fun parts
about having a customized wand and making spells and having
everything combined in ways thatyou kind of don't expect and,

(46:34):
and make that accessible, especially to more of the the
audience that we're, we're targeting the slightly more
casual players who, who aren't, you know, all about blowing
themselves up in a pool of blood, which sometimes happens
with me. I was.

(46:55):
Just saying, were you, were you,are you a big like fan of
roguelike games or was this one in particular you just happened
so. To I am a fan of roguelike
games. I, I love the idea that that
game content can be emergent after good procedural design.

(47:21):
Like AKA they've, they've set upa bunch of systems and the
systems are just like doing their thing.
And at those weird intersection points you get good game design.
Like, it's not, it's not by accident, but it almost feels
like it was. And it's definitely more that

(47:44):
pixel art style that I would guess you were first doing
before you guys decided to go with the more realistic style.
Oh yeah, yeah. I I you talk about.
That one you more just you fell in love with the mechanic idea
of the customizable ones. Yeah, yeah.

(48:05):
It's funny, I saw stuff blowing up and I had just picked up
recently Worms Armageddon and I was watching for you for this.
I started thinking of all the different your custom weapons
and and how to Lance just kind of explode and and anything is
the the whole game is part of the game kind of thing.
Like everything matters in and the entire environment is part

(48:25):
of what you're doing. Well, and the, the interesting
things about Noida, and I don't want to ruin too much of it, is
that the the game is much biggerthan you think.
It's it's not really what you think actually.
And it it has a a very interesting sort of twist on on

(48:46):
the, the play space that that isin that game.
But you know, it, it very much it's, it does such a good job
of, of promoting experimentationand exploration and all that
stuff. And I, I just loved their, their

(49:08):
physics engine. Their, their whole big thing is
not actually the Wong system at at all.
It's the the fact that they madea customized game engine that
that kind of simulates each pixel as a physics engine and.
Then your third game kind of goes back to cozy, but we gotta

(49:29):
we gotta keep that the same archstyle.
It's Stardew Valley which is theone that everyone's played.
Is this game is A1 to you? 2 play together?
Do you have your own separate farms?
Is A1 big world Have you? Have you created more than one
world there? There's been more than one world
we've we have shared a farm. I've played a lot more than he

(49:53):
has for this one. So this is your and I've had
solo farms, a shared farm with him.
I've had shared farm with like my roommates from college.
You'd only like us to pick three, but between Serger Valley
and Minecraft, those are our cozy go to.
We just we keep on going back toit and playing together games.

(50:14):
Yeah, I feel like Stardew is thegame that I I just always want
to return to like it. It's something where it's like,
I know I'm going to have a positive experience when I go
into it. Even even some of the first
times playing it, it almost feltnostalgic, even though at, you

(50:36):
know, at one point it was new tome.
And I think that feeling of like, oh, I'm just like coming
home into this, you know, this game is something that's really
nice and kind of like healing. I don't know.
It's yeah. I feel like I pay it because of.
Yeah, it's how it makes me me feel.

(50:59):
And, and specifically inspiration for our game, the,
the dialogue options, how the, the, the characters are also
unique and interesting and lively and silly and weird.
And you can, you can talk to them and have little
conversations. And I I like that and hope that

(51:24):
our characters can be silly and weird and interesting too.
And you talk about going back tostarter Valley, it's it's like a
constant, it's constantly updating forever.
He just doesn't want to get the haunted chocolatier out, that's
all. I know, give us the chocolate.

(51:45):
You could always go back to it. Like you said, we don't.
We don't even know what the haunted chocolatier is at this
point. We just know it.
There's a name for it, that's all.
There's a hotel, I know that, but I don't know it's and I
think it's the thing of even though it's become this huge,

(52:06):
you know, success story of indiegames, which obviously is
aspirational, you can tell how much it still is really a
passion project for the dev. Like it's been basically just
them the whole time. And just having that consistent
like heart and vision through the whole thing, I feel like

(52:29):
makes such a big impact and why it's such a loved and successful
game. You know, it they, the dev knew
what they wanted to do and executed that.
And like, that's nice. It's not pandering to anybody in
particular. Like it's, it's very genuine and

(52:53):
I like that a lot. It's like the opposite of
pandering because you kind of make it whatever you want it to
be. Like if you want to adventure,
you can still adventure. If you want to just chill and
farm, you just chill and farm it.
Like it's whatever you want. It's like the opposite of a
pandering game because like pandering be like, OK, we're
going to come and we're going toget this corner of the market.

(53:15):
No, it's just like, no, it's just whatever you want it to be.
Have fun, have fun. And you, you, you brought a
Minecraft and we can talk about Minecraft.
That's the other that I mean, listen, there's still there's
nothing wrong with Minecraft. That's the game you keep coming
back to now when you allow. Audible mentions.
To be clear, I just left that off because I didn't want to

(53:35):
take 3 hours of your time. But hey, we can talk Minecraft
what you want. Minecraft.
You brought Minecraft. I'll talk about Minecraft.
Well, so the you know, this is the game you you go back to you
can hang out. You could just play it.
Is is there one long standing server or world that you could
always go back to? Or is?
We've had several servers that have lasted for a while, but

(54:02):
some of the fun of it is findingnew places.
And I I'm, I'm not the kind of player who can can make this,
you know, giant monolithic thing, but you know, I, I really
enjoy discovering like cool intersections.

(54:24):
Fung. Hell no.
Fung rocks are Fung. Yeah, no, I I kind of like
always having like an ongoing world that I'm working on and
I'm making things in, but at thesame time also being a bit of a
new world addict and going places just because I love
seeing the interesting seeds that pop up.

(54:48):
I like seeing what I can, if I can try and come up with a
creative seed that'll end up being neat.
And of course, then you get intoall of the mods and it's
basically like endless creativity as far as that goes.
Like, and I don't know, it's been a cool experience 'cause

(55:11):
now, like our kids are 6 and 8 and so they're at the age where
it's like, it's a video game that we could bring them into
and all four of us can actually play together.
We're all capable. We're all gonna do our own thing
at like different, you know, levels and stuff.
Everyone's interested in different stuff.

(55:31):
But it can still be this like family bonding experience
through games that's, you know, the shared moment and it's
that's really nice. I think games are kind of
uniquely situated to to bring people together in in such a
good and wholesome way. And I really want to, you know,

(55:55):
help contribute to that environment to to offer the
world something that can bring people together that they can
enjoy. So I, I, I have to ask a
question only because I, I was the opposite.
So my kids were, were probably 6:00 and 8:00 when they taught
me Minecraft because I had, I thought I was going to be the

(56:16):
cool dad. And I, like, I, I downloaded
Minecraft and like, let's go check it out.
And like, I don't even know whatI'm doing.
This is I, I can't do this. And I, my, my son was in first
or second grade when he came home and taught his younger
sister and I how to play it. And that was the first humbling
experience I had of like, Oh no,the kids got to teach me how to
play a game now. So like did you, were you, were

(56:37):
you the ones who like you had the book and you're like, here's
how we're going to build things or you just like drop in, like
we're going to figure out Minecraft.
Like how, how did you, how did you guys do that?
Because I always wonder. So.
We got, I'm sorry, pretty young,yeah.
It started with them just watching us play like they would

(56:57):
like to like come and be like, oh, sit on your lap, watch, play
Minecraft. But did you, but did you guys go
in like I have a guide on like what I'm supposed to do?
Or do you just drop in like, I guess I'm gonna punch a tree
now, like. How we got.
How did you figure out what you're doing with it?
Yeah. I I've been playing Minecraft
since like the beta of it. So you just, you, you were born

(57:18):
molded by it and that's just, that's the way it was.
I mean, I was in college. Do not quote to me the old text.
I was there when they were. Yeah, that's.
Where I was, that's where I was too.
When it started getting popular.I remember being in college and
and people just talking about this game.
And like it's, I'm just trying to like, it's just so funny.
Like they were saying I'm going to go punch a tree.

(57:39):
Like that was the inspiration ofthe game.
Like I'm going to punch a tree and now I can build something
with a tree. You know that I punched the
tree. Like it's just so funny to me
that like I, I, I would have needed a like my my son also now
has like 10 books of like how tocraft Redstone.
Gadgets. And things, man, there's there's
it's great, but you. Didn't have that in the beta.

(58:00):
Like I'm just going to go punch a tree.
Is that what you did? No I my kick has books though.
Well, I feel like there's something to say for like, yeah,
we were able to play and we wereable to do things.
It doesn't mean that we were like, doing it particularly
well. Like I don't think I, like, I
still barely touch Redstone. I'm, I don't, I don't understand

(58:23):
how it works. And I'm like, I'm gonna go build
a pretty village instead. I don't need Redstone.
It's it's so cool to be able to watch a game progress over like.
Oh yeah. Decades is it, you know.
It's 12 year, I think it was 2013 officially maybe off the
top of my head without looking. When it when it started, like a

(58:43):
lot of those things, the the weird complex stuff wasn't even
in there. So it was a gradual learning
process as it gradually came out.
It is. It is Minecraft day.
I think Ray, like Ray, that's why you told people to go play.
It like, yeah, like Minecraft stories was.
Was this something that wasn't the exact Minecraft?

(59:04):
Oh yes, it was like dungeons or.Something.
Yeah. Minecraft is in May 2009. 2009
is the official release of Minecraft.
Oh wow. Yeah, A.
Long time no good. Guy yes, 'cause I was in College
in 2010 and I remember people starting to talk about this game
with blocks. Yeah, well, and it's nice

(59:24):
because they have the different modes too.
Like if you don't want to stressabout learning, just like don't
play in survival mode initially,play in creative or if you're in
survival, switch it to peaceful mode.
So you don't have to worry aboutfighting anything.
You can just learn how to harvest and build and and such.
So it's, it's very, it can be asstress free as you want it to

(59:48):
be, which is nice as long as you're not getting in your head
about like, I'm not playing it the true way.
Well, and especially in creativemode, you can, you can just feel
this is a fun creative tool. You can just build stuff and it
doesn't have to make sense. And Water Works strangely here,

(01:00:12):
but that's OK. I poured a bucket and I made a
waterfall at the top of a hill. Now it does work very strangely,
don't you say that? Yes.
Got to love water elevators. Going up all right, well, one of
the things we do is we we start to wind down we we everyday we
do a quest, a question that we have on channel 3 that we just

(01:00:36):
tell people, hey, what what's something you gave me?
Weren't we picked one for you toanswer for us today that we
wanted you to share with us? Let's go with this.
What game do you know best? Who?
I mean my game. That doesn't count.
Yeah, obviously, no, but OK, I'msorry.
Yes, you know the behind the scenes.

(01:00:57):
Yes. You know yours the best.
But that's that's not what we'relooking for here, and you know
it. I probably know.
Oh gosh. There's a lot of rattling around
right now, like people aren't going to see video of this, but
the eyes are. The eyes are darting side to

(01:01:17):
side for both of them as they'rethinking of it.
OK, one of either two of these the first Final Fantasy game
Final Fantasy 1. I know that one really well.
I've I've even done a quote speed run.
Not not really. It took me like 5 or 6 hours,

(01:01:40):
but Sebastian say I've done it and that one and the red and
blue on Pokémon I've, I'm so glad to have been part of that
when that first came out and played a lot, a lot of Pokémon

(01:02:03):
Rag. Have the kids gotten into that
at all? Into Pokémon.
The yes, but you know, not the not the old ones.
Yeah, no, like, right. Like the Let's Go Pikachu and
Evie were just straight remakes of that, but not but but a lot
simpler to capture the Pokémon than trying to like let me beat

(01:02:25):
you to near death but not kill you.
And it was easy to throw the ball at you the.
Tossing mechanic is really kind of tricky.
I don't, I don't know. It.
It is. I'm not going to argue that.
Yeah. All right, Christine, what's
your. You've had time.
You've had time to. Think about the game I probably
know the most would probably specifically be Burning Crusade

(01:02:48):
era World of Warcraft. Oh, World of Warcraft.
But there's a. Whole different picture of you
being painted now from where we were prior to this in the
podcast now. Oh yeah.
No, there's this guy up until upuntil a couple years ago.
So I I almost exclusively playedMMORPG.
I'm just picturing the DNA community.

(01:03:09):
This better not awaken anything in me, that's all.
You're like, honestly. Like we we we when we first
started dating, we played wow together like that was it was
one of my requirements for beingmy boyfriend is the person had
to play wow and. It was, it was great when she,
you know, when we were away different colleges, we were able
to like. But but yeah, but specifically

(01:03:33):
Burning Crusader was probably when I knew the most.
At that point, I had done every combination of race and class up
through level 20, so I knew all of the starting zones pretty
much by memory at that point. Obviously, I ended up, you know,

(01:03:56):
having favorite characters that I got farther up in the game,
but I was very addicted to the lore.
I mean, I read the novels like. She read the quest text.
I I've been teased a lot for howmuch I read quest text.
Oh, I love quest. No, no, no, I I love.
I'm a narrative. Person, absolutely, 100%.

(01:04:18):
I'm with you. So yeah, that was my headache.
But like, I mean, I remember like pre we preordered Burning
Crusade. I was in high school when it
came out, I believe. I think.
Sorry, I'm not going to try and math it on you.
Don't worry, you're fine. Yeah, no, it's I'm, I'm trying

(01:04:39):
to figure out if it was late middle school or early high
school for me. Sounds.
Good to me, yeah. It was curious, but like, you
know, got it on, got it on CDs and had to like sit at the
computer while it was installingwaiting for the OK, put in disk
2 that'd. Be 2000.
And seven, it was a whole thing,2000.
And seven. OK, 2000, yes, that would have

(01:05:00):
been like my freshman year, Ray.Ray immediately on the fact
checks. That's yeah, that's my, that's
seven. That's my sophomore.
Yeah, sophomore year. Oh, so there there's a there's a
deep, deep dark part if you locked away.
Now that's that's the moral of the story, OK?
Oh yeah, that's a whole separateepisode.
As soon as. You say wow as soon as.
You say, wow, that's a whole. That's another night.

(01:05:21):
I got introduced to EverQuest inlike when I was like 10 and I
had. Preschooler playing EverQuest.
Yeah. I hate all of you people so
much. Oh my.
Gosh, yeah. It's and honestly, I feel like,
I feel kind of like there's likea part missing that I don't have
like an MMO that I currently play now.

(01:05:43):
I almost feel like I don't have the time commitment.
You don't I I can tell right now.
You don't. You?
Yeah. Yeah.
Clearly you'd be diving full fully into it.
You yeah, don't, don't awaken that beast.
The cats, the cats, the cats need you.
Bald away a little. Bit yeah, Baldur's Gate
scratched the edge a bit. BG3.

(01:06:04):
Yeah, that works. That worked for a lot of people.
I just need 90 minutes and a time to play it.
Stop, stop. I'm gonna have somebody yell at
me 'cause you brought up Alder Skate 3 and I keep.
You know, I haven't officially finished the game.
I, oh, I was so close to being done with Act three.
I was playing it while my kids were in school last school year
and then the school year ended before I got to finish it.

(01:06:26):
And so I couldn't play it over the summer 'cause I'm not about
to play BG 3 when my kids are home.
No. Oh.
We're swinging business on the screen.
Who knew oh what was? That and like now the school
year has started back up, but now I'm like, I gotta work on
our game. So.
My game is still sitting at like90%.
There's No 10 minute Baldur's Gate three session.

(01:06:47):
You can't just do that. That's that's my problem, yeah.
Keep being like, oh, you know, I'm doing another like replay
through. I'm like how how are you?
How are you on your like 10th play through?
I don't. I'm not there.
Anyway. Anyway, on a on a note of, we're
going to have to have an entire other episode to talk about to

(01:07:09):
talk about our our MMO careers. Exorcising the wild demons.
We have made it to the end of a special.
What are your three podcasts, Whiskers, Wizards and Wands?
If you're listening to this Today came out Wish listed on
Steam. It's available.
Kickstarter goes live Wednesday,October 15th.

(01:07:30):
All the links, C3 dot GG slash Sweet and Power Sauce.
If you're there, you've got links to everything.
To Doug Christine, thanks for being with you.
Which is really fun to talk about.
I'm excited to play Whiskers, Wizards and Ones, and to Dash
and to look at all the cool artwork.

(01:07:50):
Dan, am I missing anything else?I want to make sure I capture.
Just that my son's been dying for this demo to drop because he
wants to play it again. He literally as I was putting
him to bed before this was asking wait is it out?
I'm like hold I I think it's Wednesday, but I will confirm
that they have at least the demoon Wednesday.
So he will be he'll be hijackingmy my PC on Wednesday to take.
Another look at it, it all goes well.

(01:08:12):
Compliments. If all goes well, I'll I'll have
this I'll have the demo running on stream before our before our
party night. Pre Kart yeah before.
Before we place the Mario Kart, if I can get on the computer
quick enough. Ray says with two small children
and a pregnant wife that are just that are that are hand
grenades with pins, pull them inthe minute.
We're fighting through, we're fighting through.

(01:08:34):
Hopefully I'll get the demo up playing before we raise some
karts. Anyway, thank you so much.
You can find a podcast at C3 dotGG slash podcast dropping every
Wednesday morning at 3:33 AM Eastern on all the major
platforms including Spotify, YouTube Music and Apple Podcast.
I'm Ray Dan puts this all together.
Our theme song is by Caster Garden and for our executive

(01:08:56):
producer, Joe Willis. Have a good day everybody.
Whiskers, Wizards, wallets. Go play.
I'm sorry for the delay in joining.
No, it worked out just fine. So no, it was perfectly.
Fine yeah my two kids are currently sleeping in a separate
room together because the main the main room is off limits as

(01:09:19):
I'm building a new bed so. I understand my thing too has
been sick since Saturday morning.
So I'm I'm I've got my own hand grenade pins pulled and I think
1 is always just wondering landmine of waiting to explode.
So it's all good. I wholly understand.
Yeah. So that's that's that and like

(01:09:41):
some awesome activities there essentially, like if you do want
to, there's no obligation or anything, but I like if you guys
want to share anything, please do.
We are purely dedicated to gaming and gamers, so you're not
going to be battling Facebook algorithms or anything.
You're welcome to to share whatever.
And like I said, we'll be directing people directing
people to the game on Wednesday.And, and like I said, you know,
Ray's going to Ray, Ray will runit for a little bit for folks

(01:10:05):
before we, we usually play some Mario Kart Fortnite fall guys on
Wednesday nights. So we he'll be he'll be playing
that beforehand. So I'll be Ray's the the dash
better be in the demo or you're going to be hearing from him
are. We dashed away.
Now I got to know though, who? OK, who do you play as in Mario
Kart? I've been playing as Peach

(01:10:27):
lately. I've been playing Marco.
We're Peach in her, in her, likesummertime, more of a somewhat
success one day. And so now I'm just sticking
with it. I, I don't have a man in world.
I I either run Pauline or Mario usually in, in eight.
I ran as link out of spite. I didn't do the, I didn't do the

(01:10:49):
meta builds or anything like that, But I, I literally just
played on Wednesdays. We played like we, we get a
group of people and do like the knockouts.
So I don't know if you've playedMario Kart World, but like we
just get together to do the, there's this 24 player mode that
just like every lap of the race,like it's just one rally race
that has 6 parts and it drops four people every time until you
get to a winner at the end. So.

(01:11:10):
It's the only thing I do anymore, yeah.
Yeah, it's the only thing I playwith it.
It's just I just do it to play with friends and have fun and
that's I don't play it in between during the week.
It's just I'm playing other stuff if if I get to play
anything so. I'm usually a shy guy 'cause I
like cute little guys. Nice.
We got it. We got a few shy guys running
around. That's there were a bunch of

(01:11:31):
them last weekend. There were shy guys everywhere
at the convention, just like running around that place.
I'm I'm always either dry bones or totat.
Oh, OK, All right. So you're you're, you're a
psycho. I was using toe debt for.
That actually this thing this goes wow, I'm just digging
myself. This wow, the wow thing in the

(01:11:53):
drive Bones. I'm making different judgments
now than I was. I I think.
The wholesome I just in the corner.
I kept my mouth shut about my Runescape path so.
That's an entirely different level of psychotic.
Runescape. Runescape's made a real big
resurgence, yeah. Really.
Yeah, they, they who they, well,they did, they take out some

(01:12:16):
wild people. Somebody, some some other group
got upset and they all went overand started playing Runescape
again instead. So I they got a a resurgence in
player count. I've got, well, I know we've got
some people who are, who are theold.
School Runescape crown. Yeah, let's go.
Runescape is going. Channel 3 is the future.