These Indie are Shifting their Approach! (And other JRPG News!)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
As they.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Say, Hey, everybody, welcome back to hit Point, an anime

(01:10):
new show at j RPG. New show, a niche new show,
A show where Baku and I we'll be talking about
everything and anything that catches our interest and or I er.
We'll be streaming live. We stream live every single Sunday
at seven pm Central eight pm Eastern Time. We've been
previewing some trailers, talking to some pretty cool dudes. I
can already tell about their upcoming game, Alterium Shift. Oh man,

(01:34):
I am absolutely stoked for this interview guys, because I
don't know if you guys remember this, but a long
time ago, a long long time ago, I reviewed, well,
I mean first impressions. I gave a first impressions review
of Alterium Shift when it was just coming out in
early access, and I really loved it. H yeah, so

(01:58):
I was. I was super excited about it. They actually
already saw that. I know it was. It was a
while ago, and I'm I'm curious. I wonder did I
actually do anything?

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Did you?

Speaker 2 (02:13):
I don't know, I think I hope, I don't know.
I hope my input was helpful. I guess we'll have
to find out. Well, I may, in fact, get a
review of my review. In today's show, we'll be Trailer's
talking to some cool dudes responding to super chats at
the end of the show. And uh, and I nailed

(02:35):
that intro. What a slight diversion that's called the weave?
Did you know that, Baku, is that there's a name
for that. No, nobody calls it.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
That just mixed stuff up. Oh my god, it would
have thought. No.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
So, Baku, how are you doing, man, It's good to
see you.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
I'm doing great. I forgot to buy my caps and
gowns for the graduation.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
So when when is your graduation in May?

Speaker 1 (03:07):
So have some time, but it takes like five weeks
for them to send it out apparently, So I'm.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Like, oh, okay, I gotta do this right now. I
was gonna say I didn't miss your graduation?

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Did I? No?

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Like, when is a graduation? Last week?

Speaker 1 (03:25):
So there's going to be a Sunday show that we're
not going to be able to have in May because
the commencements on Sunday are probably going to be out
with family and whatnot. So but we'll give you more
details later. But yeah, no, I'm just cruising along, living life,
dealing with this stuff. Right now, I'm streaming on Twitch

(03:48):
like a dragon pirate. Yeah it is, and man, I'm
just having a blast. Although and this is sort of
like the bad news. I think I played a little
too hard and my tendon nitis is coming back. Hashtag
game of problems. Man, that's I just thought. Hashtag old age.

(04:12):
But you know that's Oh your body just breaks down
for no apparent reason. Now, Yeah, so I need to
lay off the game for a little bit. I guess
that's a good reason why they went into turn base,
because that wouldn't be a probably it was.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Their playtesters are getting old and they're like a hat play.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
In my hand.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, how about you? Man, what's been up?

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Oh well, okay, I've already talked about it more than
I I I don't really want to talk about it.
Oh that's what I'll say. You know, my dog's having
some trouble. I don't really want to talk too much
about it here. I did talk about it briefly and
JRPG Weekly update that came out yesterday and and if

(05:00):
you want to check that out, go check it out.
But otherwise, like you know, whenever something happens and you
like have to rehash it like seventy seventy thousand times
because like, you know, someoney, someone's like just showed up
to the conversation. They're like, oh, what happened, and like
you explain it again. Somebody else comes up and they're like, oh,
I heard that your dog's having some trouble. You're like, yeah,
sure is. So you know what, Yeah, I got some

(05:24):
I got some dog back problems and it's sucking. But
we're working through it.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
So uh there man, thanks man, Well we can have
some fun today, I know.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
And it's because we have some incredible guests. They were
very flexible with us. I mean they were incredible anyway,
but also when we had to reschedule at the last minute,
uh yeah, they were more than willing to put their
plans on hold for us for that night.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
And and join relatively last minute for this as well.
So uh, everybody at home, join us and welcoming Dress
and Maazi. Uh now, now where's where's I can only
see one of you? What's going on here? I'm the
disembodied voice of the group. So it's okay, Oh he's

(06:18):
still here, okay, okay, So joining us, we have Maazi
and Dress of Maazi, I'm sorry of Dratzy Games. Sorry
Drassy are uh injected? I mean you can't see me?
So do I even exist? I don't know. I don't
have object permanence, so uh yeah, And they are co creators,

(06:42):
co founders of Dratzy Games, the creators and and developers
and and workers in progress on making Ulterium Shift. Welcome everybody.
It's good to have you here.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
It's great to be here. What are these really amazing
guests you're talking about? Are we going to get to
meet them too?

Speaker 4 (07:00):
I mean, I don't know about him, but I think
I'm pretty amazing.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
So oh man, Well, it is a pleasure to have
you guys on here. And I mean I would probably
not be the first to say that I feel very
astute and observant to notice that the name of your studio,
Dratsy Games, is in fact a Dragon ball Z style

(07:28):
fusion dance of your two names.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
Yeah, so we thought long and hard about this name.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
It's it's perfect. I have noticed that. So, so how
long did it take to master the fusion dance?

Speaker 3 (07:43):
And yeah? The great part about naming things is that
it really doesn't matter as long as you build a
brand I've learned over time you can spend hours and
it doesn't matter. And so when we did our first
game we did together, which was just a game jam game,
we said, let's just master names together and throw it
out there, and then it just.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
Kind of stuck, you know, perfect.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
I mean, honestly, I spend so much time branding stuff.
It's it's kind of ridiculous. It's one of my faults.
But you know, could you tell us a little bit
about like how you both came together to form Voltron here?

Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yes, and we told you guys before we started this,
I do tend to do a lot more talking. Yeah,
So we're going to try and make drast do a
little bit, but I'll start with this. It's actually a
story that was born from him. We had known each
other through the Smile game builder forums on Discord this.
Sai's a really niche game editor, kind of like RPG

(08:43):
developer or RPG maker, and he's like, oh, we should,
we should do something together. So we did a game
jam together and it just really clicked. He did the visuals.
I did the technology stuff, the coding and programming. I
even did sort of the storyline of what we were building,
and because that success and we felt like we did
something really good together. He came up with this really

(09:04):
neat visual idea for a game. He said, look at
this thing I'm making. It's like, oh, that looks like
a two D game but with high fidelity. Right, it
looks like a two D game but with depth to it.
And I was super intrigued. So for Christmas that year
twenty twenty, the end of twenty twenty, I gave him
some art packs from this artist named Cellulda Shaper and

(09:26):
then he took it and started building more and more
out of this idea, and he kept feeding me material
and he's like, I wonder if I can rope mazi
in on this, which is evil plan, and it eventually like, okay,
we gotta do something with this. And it just might
chills thinking about it because I just remember that moment
where he showed me a scene with the water and
you know, just a basic character. I'm like, wow, this

(09:48):
has a huge impact and this is even refined as
an idea. So we went from there and I guess,
you know, drast Raking maybe speak more. It's about what
he was thinking at the time.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, so you go ahead.

Speaker 4 (10:04):
Oh yeah, he had it on. It hit the nail
on the head there, I mean basically everything. When he
gave me those packs, I was like, dude, stop, dude stop,
But I've secretly welcomed it.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
I was like, I was like going all in. It's
just all in on it.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
I love it. So was this game that you're talking
about for the game jam? Was that a Flame of Hope?
Or was that something different?

Speaker 3 (10:26):
No, that was a Flame of Hope came after the
we started working on Alterium Shift or Alterium Shift, we
made a game called Out of Hentrol. It was a
fox in a Henhouse idea. We had to escape this
henhouse with these hens that are like controlling you and
it's a matrix style where you have to somehow get
out of it with just a small little game jam idea.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Okay, So what is a Flame of Hope? And is
it like a precursor to I mean, not to not
to gloss over the other the game jam game itself,
but I saw a little bit of Flame of Hope
and I'm like, how did I not know about this already?

Speaker 4 (11:06):
That was kind of my pet project I created it for.
So the Smile Game guilder community held a game Jam
on their own, and I'm close friends with a few
of the people there, and I was like, you know what,
I will just join it just kind of as my
last hurrah, because I knew Alterium Shift was going to
get pretty serious, so I was like, I'm just going
to throw this game out there. I got some help

(11:28):
from from Maazi with some of the Unity code in it,
just to help make it a little you know, a
little more flash hear, because we used some of the
code that we already started for Alterium Shift in Flame
of Hope.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
I did notice that it looks like there might be
a little bit of crossover, at least visually stylistically. Is
there any crossover in other ways like storyline like little
maybe hid hidden little nods here or there too, or
or anything like that, or.

Speaker 4 (12:01):
Well, a couple of the enemies you might see some
of those pop up.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
If you if you're sort of, you know, seeking some
kind of lower based verification on whether there's some story
behind it. I can either confirm nor deny. Although I
can actually confirm that it wasn't. There isn't a strict
association between the two. The visual style and some ideas
are similar, but you know, the game itself has a

(12:27):
whole different tone and thing to it than ulterium shift.
So there are two distinct little stories that it doesn't
mean we won't ever touch Flame of Hope again either.
That's still on the table, but it wasn't you know,
in the same universe.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
As Yeah, multiverse theory. I love it.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Well, Yeah, that there is some of that, uh so,
uh so, I guess.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
You know, what were some of the biggest challenges that
you guys have faced so far? As kind of the
small is it? Is it mainly a just a two
person just the two of you right now, just.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
The two of us. Yeah, it's it's mostly us. Yeah,
even though even on our website you see a bunch
of other people. Those are our contractors that do a
little bits here and there. Right, we don't have a
lot of money to spend on this, but from the
beginning it's been him and I working on this, and
we have most of the time had our own full

(13:22):
time jobs we had to do during the day, right.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
In my day, I'm a chief technology officer, so I
had lots of stuff to do. Jacob has had a
technology type of job as well, and one of the
biggest challenges not having made a major game before, having
to learn a lot of things the hard way.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
You know, I know people that have been in an
industry for twenty years and they're like, oh, why aren't
you doing it this way? Mazi, That's like, I don't know,
tell me more about how I can do better. I mean,
just the fact that we had to pivot a lot
on our plans. We started with a small scope project.
It got really interesting and really exciting, so we had

(14:03):
to expand our scope. We got a publisher, we had
to try and meet tight deadlines. We ended up terminating
that publisher. You know, now we're in the phase of
trying to get this out the door, and there's so
many things we've had to juggle along the way that
have made this hard but also rewarding.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
So so the classic tale of scope creep kind of
kind of derailed the time. Yeah, but you.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
Know, like the funny part is, I think about some
other people who make games, and they do the whole
plan upfront. For the most part, this is the game
we want to make, This is the one I've been
dreaming about. And that's not how this game even started.
It started with we really liked the visual style, let's
make something from this, and then we organically grew it
from the mechanics and the notions we wanted to impart.

(14:47):
And what's fun about that is we have flexibility and
we I think we've made something that fits together really well.
We're not trying to force you know, round peg into
a square hole. What's hard about that is managing all
the changes over time, right, and also kind of achieving
something that people really want to play, you know, the
bugs and all. You know, we get lots of people

(15:08):
this isn't exactly like I want And here's what we're
working on to try and help address some of this. However, Comma,
some of this stuff wasn't part of the overall scope
in the beginning, so we're having to adjust and you know,
really hone in on what people will love.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yeah, that's that sounds like a whole other classic tale
of like setting expectations and yeah, and people having their
own expectations. Everybody at home, make sure you hype responsibly.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
Okay, I mean RPGs, man, the retro style RPGs. People
have their favorites, and we don't completely align with all
of them, or even the new modern ones. We don't
do what all the new modern games do, and people
want that. So sometimes we're like, well, should we do
this feature or not. If it fits within the style,

(16:00):
we might and if it doesn't, we might just say, hey,
we understand that's not your style. But this is this
is what this game is about.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
This is our game, yeah, but it's not.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
You know, it's interesting and I'm going to sort of
take over just a second. This is not our game
from the sense of our pure vision, right. We have
our vision, but it's a game we want people to play.
And one thing about our perspective I even talked on
my stream about last night was even though we have
vision and what we want to do, we accept that

(16:31):
we're not making this game so we can play it
all the time. We're trying to make it so people
who love the genre and like the little jokes and
like the style and the ideas that they will enjoy it.
So when we're crafting these levels, we're not saying this
is how exactly I want it. I'm always thinking, how
will somebody experience this area? But what will they find
funny about this? Which is to me more fun than

(16:52):
just making the game I want to make because I
don't think people would like my games personally or Jacob.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
Who knows, right, I mean, I enjoyed a little jokes
that you threw in there when I test played the
game and I was telling Derri reboulics like I checked
that closet for like twenty times and there were twenty
different dialogues.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
Yes, yes, yeah, I had. There'll be a lot more
about that in the final version of the game too,
I have more pass.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah, And I totally agree with what you're saying though
about like how not not necessarily all games are for
all people. So in the spirit of that, what's a
really popular game that that you just really hate? Just kidding?
We don't have to do that, I'm kidding.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
I don't know if i'd hate a game I would
say this, but I will say this, There are a
lot of games out there people love, so I will
gain say what they love in the genre. And the
things that I look for in a game is I
don't want to be bogged down by story unless it's interesting,
So yeah, I don't love games that start out with
extensive intro sequences that I can't escape. I want story

(18:01):
to make sense, and I want there to be some
humor and logical structure to it. So games that don't
do that really are less interesting to me. I don't
care about mechanics as much. Mechanics are interesting, but they're
not the thing that really drives me. So what's interesting
to me is there's some games out there that are
beautiful games. Everyone loves them, really popular. I don't hate

(18:22):
those games, but the components that I like are not there,
and it's like, I want our game to to feel
to address that piece, right, I want the mechanics, but
I also want these other pieces I feel like other
games miss out on.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yeah, you know, and that's that's such an intrinsic balance
to try to strike. Is like the story and the gameplay.
It's too it's it's a balancing act to a degree,
but also like they're both in they're both necessary, but
there's also like a group that's like they're there for
the gameplay, and then there's a group that is there
there for the story and of course there it's not

(18:59):
too separate. This is a fan diagram, of of course,
but but it's just it's just interesting to see people
like talk about trying to strike that balance, right.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
Balance is interesting because me and drash Ray I call
him Jacob because that's his name too, but I always
call him Jacobs stead of Drass. He and I have
different styles for these style of the games. He's the
kind that just want to get from point A to
point B. I'm the kind that will check everything in
a room, And so when we get into these debates
about how to make the players enjoy the game, He's like,

(19:32):
I don't care about any of that. I just want
to get get where I'm going. And so we always
have to balance our own perspectives on that. Hence why
when you go and explore areas, you'll find things that
are mostly written by me, because I'm like, I want
to do that. When you talk to the fireplace five times,
what's going to happen? And and uh, drash Rays like, well,
there's a shop, I want to buy stuff and leave.
You know, how do I get in and out?

Speaker 1 (19:54):
So you're the reason why I couldn't get out of
town for like the first like two hours.

Speaker 3 (19:59):
We we have legitimately had complaints about that. Someone said,
I hate that you have so many things interact with
because now I want to check everything. Okay, but don't
wow over that.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
Most of them are like a great problem to have
there first wirl problem. Too many dialogues that are optional.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yeah, you know, so you know, and I think that
that does lead into you know, one of the questions
that I had, which is like, what are what are
some of your core design philosophies behind Ulterium Shift, Like
when it comes to designing interactions, designing designing the world

(20:39):
of Ulterium Shift, Like, what what are some of your
guide posts here?

Speaker 3 (20:43):
Yeah, we had so we actually have like a pitch
deck that we were using that has the pillars. You know,
a lot of times you want to make the pillars
of the game that you can build around. So one
of the major pillars of the game is a living world.
We wanted the game to feel like you were in it,
and and I think that also goes against what you
would expect from a classic two D game, only for

(21:04):
the fact that it's flat. Even the games that try
not to they still look a little flat. Yeah, they
don't have interactions everywhere, right, So modern Western RPGs that
are three D, you can you know, like Oblivion and stuff.
You can just interact with anything, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
You pick up a point on the table and throw
it across the room. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
Now, you can't get that full effect from a retro
style game, but we want more than just a town
that looks pretty. We want it to feel like you're
in it. And there's more elements we'll be adding that
will enhance that even further. But the idea that you
can talk to someone twice and they'll give you a
different response, that's not, you know, classic retro they'll just
keep saying the same thing in classic games. So that

(21:42):
living world is really what we're trying to give to people,
This idea that if you play it, you'll get a
different experience than someone else that plays nearly the same way,
because people will respond differently if you talk to them more,
if you choose one different option than another, you get
slightly different responses. So it's not the same game for everybody. Yeah,
and we expand that everywhere. Right, I meant the retroesthetic

(22:04):
is definitely one of our pillars. And some weird noises
happening above me, and I can't remember what our other
ones were off the top of my head, but I should,
I should know them. But those are the major ones.
But those those pillars are what we guide when we
go back and look and say does this fit what
we're trying to accomplish, And if it's not, then we

(22:26):
question whether we should be adding it. The other thing
we try to follow is we try not to handhold
people through everything in the game. Honestly, this is a
me thing because you know, Gas would say, well, why
don't we just put a little marker there, right, And
I'd say, why don't we design the game better so
they know where they're going? Right? So my design philosophy is,

(22:49):
if you have to put something there that tells someone
where to go, you've lost your ability to design a
game and you're just essentially cheating.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Yeah. I think that's called invisible design if I'm not mistaken, right.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
Uh, yes, yes, that's the perfect technical term.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah. So, you know, it has occurred to me that
I completely spaced one of the things that I normally
like to start these interviews off. I was so excited
to talk to you guys, and now that now that
you've simmered those I'm just kidding now now that I've
remembered I I normally like to show off the trailer
for everybody. Uh, I mean we've had this little you know,

(23:26):
postage stamp of of of the game playing here in
the background. But let's go ahead and take a look
at this game together. Uh and uh or this trailer.
We've got one that's it's about a minute long from
the Winter Games Expo, and we'll we'll just watch that
real quick and then, uh, you know, get get the
audience a feel for the game as it stands relatively recently,

(23:49):
and then we'll yeah, uh, and then we'll come back
for for some additional questions. Here just a second, here,
see if I can there we go. I can't believe

(24:09):
I forgot to. I can't believe I forgot to rewatch
the trailer. Man, this looks so good.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
Okay, wait to hop back into this, I know when
it is ready and out.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
And look it's got a fishing mini game. That means
it's a real j RPG.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
It is it is real.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
Wait did I see you can pet the dog?

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Yes, you can pet the dog. Yes, the dog will
follow you.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
In fact, that is a tent out of ten.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Will it fight for you? Well, we'll have to figure
that out. Oh my gosh, okay, okay, so yeah, oh
oh wait, there's more to that trailer.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
Look at that art to those characters they do. Wait,
I gotta back up in high responsible. Come on, go back.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
I'm trying, I'm trying. Hang on, hang on, let's let's
take two. Take two, you know the current characters. Okay,
I gotta wait here, those looks so good.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
Yeah, that's the new pixelar we're working on.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
Oh my god, oh my gosh. All right o, yep there,
let's bring him back where you go?

Speaker 1 (25:34):
Hey, welcome back.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
One interview over, no interview over.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
We're sold, goodbye, good I got you know.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
So that's that's a last Now that that did, that
trailer did wind up mentioning the Kickstarter, and I would
be remiss to like not just use that as a
as an entry point just kind of bring back the Kickstarter.
I have everybody in the chat or watching afterwards. I
did throw in a a link to the discord to

(26:11):
the discord to the to the Kickstarter, as well as
their Steam page, which I mean, if you're not going
to support them on Kickstarter, you may as well go
wishless the game on Steam. I mean, you're here, you're
halfway there already, it's you may as well do it.

Speaker 3 (26:26):
We won't mind.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, exactly, I'm glad I'm glad some people have the
same references that I do the Hurley he boy. Oh
it's wonderful. So uh Now, my next question though, that
I had up on the on the list here, it's
a it's a little little bit of a of self
serving question, I think, but I have to ask. So

(26:49):
about a year ago, when when I first played the game,
I made my own first impressions video talking about how
awesome this game was, and I provide a little bit
of fee back and stuff, and I was just curious
if any specific changes or choices that you've implemented since
then were a result of any of the feedback that

(27:10):
I personally provided.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
Well, first off, i'd like to say, if I wanted
to take the classic indie studio perspective, I am offended
that you provide provided us with feedback.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
How perfect I love it.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
Now. So, one thing I was talking with Jacob about
which I found interesting, is we get a lot of
feedback all the time, and I think people believe that
we hadn't thought about most of these things. And then
if I look back to the first year of our design,
a lot of things people tell us like why didn't
you do this? Why doesn't this like, actually that was
within the first six months we thought of that idea.

(27:46):
We just chopped all the scope out of it, right,
We're like, oh, we're gonna do this or we're not
gonna do that. So I did rewatch your video just
to make sure I remembered what you had to say. Ironically,
a lot of the things that you say it need
to happen. They haven't happened yet but on our list,
but not because we said we're not going to listen

(28:07):
to Derek. We listen. We we fixed a lot of bugs,
so we launched early access earlier than we wanted to,
just to be clear.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
And I think you actually resolved a bug that I
reported to you guys early early on when I was
like playing through it and got stuck in like a
I want to call it a water temple. I don't
think it's a water temple, but yeah, you were really quick.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
Call it the water temple. It's actually just a water
processing plant, but you know whatever.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah, yes, we did.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
We fixed a lot of things. We made more bugs,
but we typically are trying to keep the ratio to
more fixes the bugs introduced. We fixed a lot of bugs,
so we've launched the early access. We've made some really
foundational changes to the product that did come at the
cost of content progress. But I think that ultimately having

(28:56):
the game work consistently and smoothly is really valuable. Right,
the content can come, but if things are broken, they're broken.
You can't play the game any further. So we fixed
a lot of bugs. We made some a large number
of enhancements actually to the system and the game. You know,
even just things like it's not like major, but you

(29:19):
can nudge the camera around, right, People complain that it's
too tight of an angle and they want to be
able to look around the corner. Well, they have a
way now to nudge the camera. So there are lots
of little things to make the game feel and work better.
And then you know, combat, we're totally overhauling that right now.
It's long long coming, right, there'll be up fully on

(29:39):
map battles. There's not going to be this switching to
another scene. And I've actually when I stream it, I
kind of work a little bit and show people what
I'm doing. But it's gonna be really fun because you know,
unlike even two D games, you got one static view,
but when you have a three D game, you can
do things like you shift the entire battle zone around
so you can have a on that battle that moves

(30:01):
the camera around to where you're going to fight. So
we have really fun things coming, but it's just a
really complicated problem to solve, which is why it's not
ready yet. We have the move my list over here
time looking off the screen. Fishing. You saw that that
fishing mini game is actually done. It's not in the
current product because we need to test it and we

(30:23):
need to roll it out to every single place that
you can fish. But and then they set up the
stock of fish and all that stuff. But it's a
whole different fishing mini game where you actually reel the
fish in. You can see it moving with you.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Wait, there's two fishing minigames.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
There's a current fishing minigame. There's one that currently exists,
which is very simple, that's been there since the demo.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Okay, okay, okay, So there's there's an other, more different
fishing minigameyah okay.

Speaker 3 (30:52):
The new fishing mini game, which you saw in the
trailer is more akin to some of the modern ideas.
You're right, you see it right there.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
You you cast the line and then you try to
trick a fish into biding the line, and then you
reel the fish in right, and then there's certain criteria
that will affect how the fish responds or whether you
are able to catch some if your rod isn't strong
enough at my break and things.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Like oh yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 3 (31:18):
Those are two major things that we're looking to get
out on our next release, which we'll see timing. Because
of the Kickstarter it's kind of thrown us off a bit.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
I understand, that's that's so cool. I was. You had
me a little bit excited there when I thought I
had access to two fishing minigames at the same time.
That would be a bold choice. I haven't seen that
done in any other RPG up to this point. I'm
not saying you'd be the first.

Speaker 3 (31:44):
We could make an optional like simple version and the
complex version, I mean old New.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
Well, you do you do the one to to, you know,
do the normal rewards, you do both in order to
get like the the ultimate weapon that you know that
defeats the the endgame boss. Of course, that's.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
How all your people will talk more about that.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Okay, okay, speaking of speaking of people giving you unwanted opinions.
How do you find a balance between implementing feedback versus
your original vision? Uh? And how often do you find
that they're at odds? I know we kind of already
touched on this a little bit, but.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
Like, yeah, it's a good question. And you know, going
back to your final bits of feedback even had to
do with game balance and stuff. But like a game
isn't balanced, it's too easy. Yeah, that's what happens at
the end, right, You don't balance a game before you're
ready for it. So we all we know that all
has to happen. But usually what what we have found is,

(32:47):
with almost ninety percent accuracy, we know all the things
people want. I'm not I'm not even making this up.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
I believe it.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
We had all of our plans in place, and then
we said, we're not going to worry about that unless
someone complains. When they complain, we're gonna start worrying about
it because not that they hate it, but just they
want something to be better. Like, Okay, we're hearing enough
feedback that we need to address this.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, So we.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
Thought about all the ideas in the sun, and then
when we start seeing people say they want something that
we maybe weren't planning to prioritize. We pull it up
into our priority list. But it's very very rare that
someone comes up with an idea we didn't already consider
to some degree because it's just how we think. Some
examples of things we thought of and then I was

(33:31):
really really against was the notion of things like health
bars and battle and we haven't added that yet. We
have the way to do it, but we haven't yet done.
It'll come in the next Battle update. But I didn't
want to do that. I grew up with games that
didn't provide that for you. I didn't have to do it.
But we're gonna do it because we saw people say

(33:51):
it makes sense for the style of game.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
I could see that, yeah, and I I do have
to actually say that. The thing about making a first
impressions video about a game that you know is still
in progress is a lot of times it's really it's
not really feedback for the developers, but it's to help
set expectations for when my people play the game and
experience it. They don't just think, well, he didn't even

(34:19):
mentioned that, you know such and such and such and like, well,
I have to be exhaustive but when I played the game,
I knew that you guys are have a solid direction,
and I was so excited. Of course, of course I
was so excited and and I hope that that came
through in that in that first Impressions video, regardless of

(34:39):
the knits that I was required to pick. So I.

Speaker 3 (34:44):
Mean, I honestly, I thought you were trying to go easy,
honest or something. I was like, you could be a
little meaner if you want. We're used to.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
Oh yeah, we've been make a meaner video next time.
That's the feedback to you.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
So yeah, I know, gosh, has it already been a
half hour. I need to move along this list of questions.
I have too many questions to ask many questions.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
So sorry what I said. Sorry, I apologize.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
Oh I know, it's okay. I I I accept your apology.
As long as I have you know a way to
have a playable cat join my party later on?

Speaker 3 (35:26):
Uh, well, we'll start working on that, right mew mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, don't get you get me started. Uh So, Ulterium Shift,
I'm sorry, Ulterium Shift. I need to I need to
I need to adjust my my inner monologue. Here it's
said in the world of Alteria. What were some of
your primary inspirations behind the lore and backstory of Ulterium Shift.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
It's a good question. So I think I was going
to make drass start about that, but I think you
would probably for me do that, right, Dress.

Speaker 4 (36:08):
Yeah, this is more your thing here, all right, all right,
all right, well I'll join in later, Okay.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
So the there's a couple layers of motivation. First off,
the idea came from the notion that you can move
a camera in a world that looks like it's a
two D game. When I grew up playing games, I
always wanted to know what was behind things. It's in
a two D game, there's nothing behind it, right, Usually
it's just facade essentially, And I love the notion that

(36:36):
we could shift the world around. We called it flipping
at the time, but shifting makes a better term. And
so everything that we were thinking of was this notion
of a world that's presented to you as a classic
you know, RPG, and then behind everything there's something completely different,
not like going through just a portal, like literally the

(36:58):
world just shifts around and there's stuff behind it. So
originally we wanted the idea that every scene was shiftable,
but that's a lot harder to map than it is
to do specific areas. And the storyline is based on
that concept that, you know, the political environment of our
you know, country has been very interesting and at the

(37:19):
time we also recognize that there are people who live
in their nice little place on top of the mountain
and they don't really know what's going on around them, right,
And that's kind of where you start. And originally it
was going to be like right down at the bottom
of the hill, there was some dark elves living down
there that were in poverty or something, and no one

(37:39):
knew about it because it's behind everything. It's not quite
like that now, like the whole way the story has
evolved has turned much more into the fantasy notion, where
you have this kind of broad scope of characters and
this world that has a history to it. So, you know,
the motivation of the story started there, and then it
grew organically based upon how some of the mechanics would work,

(38:05):
and how the characters started growing and fitting together, and
how we started trying to make the history fit to
where they are. So, you know, there's a lot more
to it. Now, there's way more to it, and we
start getting into things like multi dimensional concepts and you know,
some of the other goodies in there.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
But even based on like coming from a concept like that,
I can see how easily that would lend itself to
some dark twists of perspective to kind of seed themselves
in the storytelling of this game. So that's so cool.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
My personal storywriting motivation comes from that idea. When you
have a story where you perceive some other as being
evil and bad not too much of a spoiler, because
there's more to it than this too, But then you
get into it and you realize it's not. There's more
nuance to it, right, there's not one just one one
bad and one good?

Speaker 2 (38:58):
Right, yeah, a lot more until you get even deeper
and then you realize you were right the first time.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
Yeah, or yeah, you were the bad guy all along.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Reverse psychology. Okay, how many much you make?

Speaker 3 (39:13):
Right?

Speaker 2 (39:14):
I don't know. I I only drive a five speed
so so uh yeah. In this game, there are also
three protagonists, three different kind of character arcs that the
game follows through. How does that present? I mean that

(39:35):
has to be kind of tricky when because they're not
always together, Like there's three different like storylines through this game, right,
and how how much complexity does that add to, like
keeping track of different plot threads like at this point,
this person is over here doing this thing, and over
here there's something else going on, Like how much how

(39:57):
much added like difficulty is there? And keeping that like
a canon or timeline? What's the word.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
Consistency? Yes, yes, continuity.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
Continuity, that's the one, thank you.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Yeah, it's not, honestly not hard. It's just three different
games in one basically, right, it's like the same same
template of a game, but with three different character storylines.
It's not exactly that simplistic, but the way it works,
when you choose your main character, that's that character's story. Yeah,

(40:32):
so every time we had to start over as one
of the characters, we looked at it from that character's perspective.
So you you start in three different places. Each character
has their own personality they apply to it, and then
your interactions are for that experience. So it's not as
hard to track the differences between choosing a different main character.
Yet there will be some complexities later, but it is

(40:56):
hard to have to go and build a story that
has some variance but then ultimately has to come together
in the end, you've got to have some way to
push them all in the same direction. There aren't three
wildly different endings per character. There are multiple endings, but
not in the way you think they are, So it

(41:16):
really wasn't That's not really the complexity, honestly, it's more
about how to make it interesting that people are going
to want to play as the three different characters. How
do you make it so that your experience, even though
it's in the same place, is unique.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
And that's a great question. How do you do that.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
With a lot of work. I mean, right now, the
word we think we're at like fifty thousand words or
more fifty to sixty thousand words, and you probably most
people will never experience all of them because of all
the different branding, dialogues and sort of randomization. Some places
you can get jokes to keep talking to a little
cycle through a bunch of random jokes. So you do

(41:57):
it by having specific things that the character themselves can
only get access to, or by making you know, key
characters ones that have completely different dialogues, or making quests
that only that one character can get. It kind of
adds that flavor. And then just also just doing a
lot of work. Each character. Someone will just talk to

(42:18):
you differently. People say, oh, if it's Pyra, then say
these things right, and it's you know, I had to
build a whole system in order to handle it, which helps.
But it's just a lot and that's all it is
is work. I don't know what else to say.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
That's that is really cool.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
So like we it's the intention for like a player
to like go through this like start to finish three
times or is this sort of like no, you're going
to do this in one play through and you kind
of shift between characters shifting like what what's the intention?

(42:55):
Like what's the intended play Like Psycho looks like.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
Well, you know, going back something we said earlier that
not everybody wants to play games the same way. It
is meant to be somewhat flexible. You can play the
game through as one character, beat the game and be
happy with yourself and move on. You can play the
game all the way through one character and go back
and then we you know, play the next one and
play the next one. It is intended to encourage some

(43:22):
character swapping during the game, so you get to a
certain point and the demo actually shows us you get
to that special yellow node and that allows you to
change the color that then you know, open certain doors
or make certain chest unlock. You're like, oh, now I
got to go back as this other character in order
to get access to this special treat. And the intent

(43:44):
is the first time you play, it will be the
most effort, and then we'll have some mechanics in here
that make it so you can essentially recycle or borrow
or absorb experience points or otherwise from other saves. Essential
because if you never haven't noticed, we don't have any
limit on the number of saves a lot like you
three saves and that's it. We just have infinite saves,

(44:06):
as much as hard rae drive space as you have.
But then if you absorb that or deal with that,
there will be a mechanic that lets you or encourages
you to essentially steal from your other saves. It will
be like cross save mechanics for sharing items. There'll be
certain notions where when you have to go back to

(44:27):
a completely new character, you can still essentially pull in
some value from your previous completely other character. How that
mechanic exactly gonna work, That's a fine tuning thing. We've
got to work on. But that's how we kind of
envision it is someone's gonna play through all the way
and they'll be like, wait a minute, I could have
gone back and so and so. I'll let me try that,
and then they'll start seeing, oh, I can do this

(44:48):
with this. Wait a minute. I don't have to get everything.
I don't have to collect everything in order to achieve
certain things. I can go back later as a different
save and then just give different responses to somebody to
get some special thing. Because you know everyone wants that, right.
You want to get completionists, but you always hate that
you have to go back as a whole new save
to get it. So we're not even gonna bother with that.

(45:09):
We're not going to make a game that's open where
you can just always get everything out all the time.
But we are going to make it so you can
go back as a different save and get whatever you
want and then you know, push it forward, even which
I really like. I love this idea because I really
don't like it when I miss something in a game
and now I have to somehow go back and get
it or start a whole new save.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
The entire thing to get back to that point.

Speaker 3 (45:33):
Right, if the game is geared towards players having to
go back and play as other characters, we want to
make it feel not only worthwhile, but not like it's
a chore. We want to make it feel fun and interesting.
So we're going to bake that into the mechanic. But
I'm really excited, Like we've been playing with it a
little bit, but we have to really dig in on,
you know, some of the ins and outs of it.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
That's so cool, and I think that our audience here
are really going to a preciate it because I think
that we're all pragmatic enough to know that, like, we
don't have the same unlimited time to play games as
we did when you were in like third grade on
summer break or something, and you had to play through
Chrono Trigger seventeen times to see everything because that was

(46:15):
the only game you had anything left that you hadn't
experienced anything. And yet so so that's so cool, because
living in twenty twenty five, my backlog is massive and
indies are coming to rescue me from that. So I
really appreciate that. So I wanted to move along to
talking a little bit about some of the technicals here

(46:36):
a little bit of the implementation side of things, because
you know, this is a really unique kind of game
where it blends both. I mean, obviously like just look
at look at this game. It's beautiful for one, absolutely gorgeous.
But also it is not just as it's not an

(46:57):
HD two D game i'lla square enix, it's it's definitely
something else because it's still got that pixel retro look,
but it is in like an actual, like three dimensional environment,
and and that dimensionality plays a role in the shifting
mechanic as you said before. So but there's actually like

(47:18):
three dimensional planes that you have to to to be
able to navigate here. How do you make that work? Exactly?
I mean, I guess from a you know, thousand foot
view rather than you know, yeah exactly.

Speaker 4 (47:33):
Let me let me walk you through every single aspect
of how we create our game, from.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
Pixel to.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
You have time, if you've got time to do a
we have time.

Speaker 4 (47:46):
I think for me, when when I was first creating
the world for Ulterium Shift, it was a culmination of experience.
I have done three D modeling for a number of years.
I I've always wanted to do a PS one style
game just in the back of my head. I'm just like,
I love that that play of pixel art and three

(48:09):
D environment, right, And so just over the years I
learned how to create those things. Ulterom Shift is just
the culmination of all that experience that I built up
taking pixel art and creating three D models from that that.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
So, so you've had some like kind of inspirations from
PlayStation one era. Correct, So when when I think of that,
games that come to my mind are games like bread
the Fire three Grandia, what what.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
Kind of game like?

Speaker 2 (48:39):
Which games specifically were you kind of having a mind
when playing around with this era, this, this PlayStation one
era of RPG.

Speaker 4 (48:47):
Yeah, definitely I loved breath Fire four art style. It's timeless.
I mean you still book that game up and it
just looks absolutely beautiful. The palette, the palette that they
used was amazing, and so it holds up today. I'd
say that's when it comes to a PS one game
and how it looks, that's that's what's in my head,

(49:10):
is breath Fire for like, that's the first thing that
comes to my mind.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
That's pretty quid essential man, And it is some of
the even today, some of the best pixel art that
I've ever seen a man. I love it so much,
and so I guess one of the other questions I
had is, you know, what role does the sound design
and actually the music in general here, what does that?

(49:34):
How do you use that to inform the atmosphere of Ulteria?
And are there any like unconventional approaches that you took
to to kind of using sound to build the world.

Speaker 4 (49:48):
So I think from from my perspective, when I'm create
a game, I'm always listening to music, and so the
only thing that I listen to when I create stuff
is actually music from JRPGs, which is kind of funny
and ironic because I'm making love, but I love it
as well. And so games like Chrono Trigger and you know,

(50:14):
Final Fantasy that really those games really rely a lot
on their soundtrack to to breathe the motion into the game.
I feel like we wanted to do something very similar
and take some melodic approaches to the game, where you know,
you'll hear the same or similar melody throughout the game,
but it's played out differently depending on where you are,

(50:37):
and you'll you'll, I think and hope people will recognize that.
In our composer Jonathan Shaw. He's done an amazing job
to work with us on that. He is inspired by
games like Golden Sun as well, So I mean, I
feel like the mixture that we have there really definitely
helps bring our world alive with the music and the

(50:58):
melodies that we we use to and what.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
I want to add to that just briefly, because when
we talk about this, he was the one that proposed
this idea that when you go into a building, that
should remove some some instruments so it sounds like it's
a little muffled. Yeah, I notice that. I'm I can't
remember we applied it everywhere, so we still have to
go and double check that. But he's like, yeah, I
could just take some instruments out and then you'll have

(51:21):
a feeling of a slightly different sound from what it
sounds like when you're out walking in town, which is great. Like,
he's got a lot of motivation for this. The whole
soundtrack is his and his style just fits exactly the
type of feel we're looking for for that experience.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
I love that, and I know I always notice it
when a game does stuff like that, but I cannot,
for the life of me remember a game that does
that like I can't, but but it always adds that
little bit of like, oh, I'm inside and now it's
like calmer, you know, things are a little bit quieter.
It's it's you know, you go then you go back

(51:57):
outside and it's bright and lively and overwhelming, and it's like,
oh my god, I'm in the world. I love it.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
Yes, exactly. It really adds to the ambiance.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Oh man, So could you discuss some of the technical
choices I guess behind implementing some of the on map
abilities like being able to shoot arrows as shown on
camera here just a second ago, or you know how
I guess that seems like that would be really difficult

(52:28):
to do and how do you ensure that? Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
We made things a lot more difficult for ourselves because
we're building on top of an existing engine. Like I said,
some of my developer friends would be saying, why don't
you build it in unity? Why are you doing it,
you know, by working through another engine, And a lot
of that has to do with the quickness in which
we could build the product.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
Right.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
Yeah, there's more work for me because I have to
learn it and then enhance it and beyond mapp ability,
some of them feel a little bit clunky right now
because we're trying to work through another engine. I will
be that by the way. But the on map abilities themselves,
the ones that you see currently in the game, are
meant as a way to control access to areas based

(53:09):
on your main character. That is its classic mechanic in
RPGs where you can't get past a certain area until
you get some ability or skill, right, And so we
applied that to every character, and we thought, because we're
looking at this uniqueness of feel, every character has to
have their own ability, and so Pyra can whack things
with her spear, you know, Atlas can shoot things with arrow,

(53:32):
and Sage actually has the ability to discover stuff with
you know, their little laser light shooting things. So everyone
has their own thing. But the one thing that we
haven't talked about a lot is that they will also
have a secondary ability, which is more of a free
form version. So, for instance, Atlas will be able to

(53:53):
just randomly shoot things however you want to do, which
will apply to the combat, so you could shoot people,
you know, shoot monsters before battle starts, or at least
I mean, Pirate will be able to whack things or
use a slice type of attack which she could maybe
slice grass or other things around, right, break things open,

(54:13):
and find some extra stuff. And so it's not technically challenging. Really.
The technical challenges our own making of having to work
through the engine and the performance stuff will come as
part of just the regular polishing aspect of the work.
I'm less concerned about that, more about making sure that

(54:33):
it feels right and people enjoy the experience, because you
add too many things and it might be overwhelming, but
I just it feels like it fits. The whole idea
of this game is not just your static you know
RPG where you walk from point to A to point B,
fight some monsters and then you go to the next thing. Right,
There's more things that you can do to explore and
experience the world, and that's why we added these sort

(54:55):
of ideas so you get this feeling of difference and
uniqueness and you know, really get to expand your character
not just by how you talk, but how you interact
with the world.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Yeah. Yeah, and being able and being able to interact
with the world kind of just helps it feel more
like a well defined existing world, which is one of
the things that you're at the top of the show.
We're talking about trying to make it feel like you're
actually in the town or in the world, you know,
trying to add that and being able to interact with

(55:26):
those things is how you can help achieve that. That's
so cool. So right now, Alterium Shift is it. I'm sorry,
Ulterium Shift is in early access, but you also have
have it on Kickstarter right now as well. Correct. Correct,

(55:47):
So it's in early access and I know that. Ah, so,
I guess I think that you guys had been talking
a little bit about how you're working on balancing the
people who have like kind of purchased the game in
early access versus the people who are backing on Kickstarter.

(56:08):
Did you guys want to talk about that, how you're
trying to balance that.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
Oh? Yeah, yeah, and we knew. We actually tried to
actively avoid doing a Kickstarter. That's why we went with
the publisher originally, and for various reasons we ended up
amicably terminating with them. Sure, but without the ability to
fund our efforts, everything's just really hard to move forward.
We both have full time jobs, we've got a lot

(56:34):
of stuff going on, we've got families, and just it's
hard to squeeze time in for that, and so we
realized that the only way we're going to be able
to push through the finish line in any sort of
timeframe is by getting a kickstarter out there. You going
into that that people who already bought early access might
feel left out, like, oh, why did I support this

(56:55):
game and early access if they're doing a kickstarter, So
that has its double edged sword, right advantages. You can
look at the game and see what's supported. You can
see we've been supporting it. There's all sorts of fixes
out there. We respond to people on the boards, so
it's not like it's a you know, vaporware. You know
that it exists. It's a solidly existing game. But if

(57:15):
you paid for it already, you feel like, well, why
did I spend so much money? And so we implemented
a verification system. We have a link on our website. Oh,
We've been sending out to people that they can go
and validate that they own the game, and if they
do that, they'll get some free rewards, digital rewards like

(57:35):
postcards that no one else is going to get digital
postcards or special credits in the game if they back
the kickstarter too. Out the top of my head. I
can't remember all of them, but they're all digital rewards
because you know, they bought the game digitally, So we're
doing that, and then we're also adding them into our
what we're calling our VIP program, which is anybody who's

(57:56):
who supported the Kickstarter before we started with us and
anyone who's bought the game before they will get extra
rewards as part of the Kickstarter funding and fulfillment. So
we've already sent all the communications out about that, and
I know that it doesn't necessarily assuage everybody's concerned. Some people,

(58:16):
you know, have a you know, besmirched our name. They
don't like us anymore, and they think we're They use
certain terms that we don't want to repeat, but you know,
we do the best that we can, right Yeah. We
try to connect with people and we try to do
the best to make good on things, and if it
doesn't work, you know, we don't hate people for feeling

(58:37):
that way. We know how this industry is, but we're
hoping that people see that we're actually making the effort,
right Yeah. And there's a lot of work to set
up any kind of website, even if it's just you know,
a page with content on it, let alone setting up
something that actually goes into Steam and validates that they
have the the version of the game and then says, oh,
now you're included in this list. You know that's yeah

(59:00):
next week.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
Totally understand what you're saying. And and I think though
that what what a lot of the people will really
appreciate though, is when this kickstarter just really well kickstarts
your ability to really finish the game and and have
a finished product in their hands much faster than it
would have been done otherwise. Right, So so hopefully you know,

(59:24):
that will help ease some of the tension there, I guess,
and and I guess, how do you envision like the
transition from early access to a full game. Are you
looking at just like continually adding like iterative releases until
eventually one day it is the finished product or are
we looking at like, you know, a kind of a

(59:46):
maintaining of like what we have so far, going into
high gear behind the scenes, and then releasing a big
update at once, like what's what's the what's that look
like in your in your in your minds right now.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
Our current goal is to get to this seventy five
content complete mark, which is at or near the end
of Act two, and then after that point, other than
doing some maintenance, bug fixes and stuff, we won't make
any major updates to the game until it launches. Okay,
the one thing is important for people to know because

(01:00:18):
this catass all the time. Will I lose my saves
and all that? The game itself, the version that you
see in the demo and early access, that's the game
that's going to get launched. I don't know how people
manage multiple versions of games. I come from the software industry,
where you make one product, you manage, and then you
manage the the improvements by deploying over what's already there.
You don't, you know, make three different versions of it.

(01:00:40):
So the game will continue to work with people saves.
There's nothing special or unique about your demo saves versus
your early access saves. So yeah, at some point will
launch the game, it'll be ready to go. And with
this kickstarter we'll be doing all versions of console. So
that does add some fun complexities that we're working on mitigating. Finally,

(01:01:04):
we might also be looking into things like, well, if
we're going to do multiple consoles, what sort of way
can we allow people to even share their saves across platform.
I'm not committing to that yet because I really have
not looked into the technical aspect of it. But my
desire is always to seek those sort of solutions if
I can.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Well, I think that the obvious solution. I think the
obvious solution is a seventy five character password that you
have to oh.

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
Like Golden Sun. Yes, you go on the Golden Sun route. Yeah,
of course. I never played the next version, Golden Son.
I was so mad after playing the first version. I
didn't get to finish the game. Really, I was like, oh,
you know what, I give up on this.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Legitimately, when I played Golden Sun too, I streamed it,
I life streamed it, and I didn't anticipate that that
the password system was going to be quite as robust.
So entering in my password from one to the other
legitimately took like three hours straight. It was ridiculous. Yeah. So,

(01:02:07):
I mean, I don't know there Maybe there will be
some QR code thing you could do. I don't know,
I don't know. Maybe not.

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
Yeah, we'll figure out, you know whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
I'll help you figure this out later. I'll give you
more more.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
All I want to tell people is like we try
to do the sort of thing. We have a genuine
interest in finding things that people will like and appreciate
and enjoy. They don't always convert into profit for indie studios.
That's why they don't always do it. But I like
to solve these sort of problems. So if I'm presented
with something that makes sense and I think I can
fit it in and I'm going to find a way
to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
I love that. Ah, that's so cool. So I guess
that that ties into this other question about like, how
do you balance taking creative risks with practical commercial considerations
of launching an indie RPG in today's market? Like, that's.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
Well, I don't think. If I to tell you the
hero's journey of us, i'd say, don't do it the
way we did it. Sorry, this is dragmatically speaking. We're
doing it the smart way. We would be doing what
we were doing. We have fifty five thousand whistless on steam.
We probably should have just hold up and not done

(01:03:20):
an early access launch and just keep building it until
we launched it. Right, So how do you balance it?
I'd like to tell you the right way, but this
is our first product, so I don't think anything we
do will be the right way. Everything is the wrong way.
The Kickstarter we've been making changes the whole time. You
don't do that with kickstarters. A lot of work that's

(01:03:42):
not the right way to do it. So, you know,
I'd love to tell you a good answer to that,
and all I can tell you is the way we've
done it is a lot more work than I think
any other studio would probably do it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Wow, yeah, I think, Oh go ahead.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
I'm only laughing because we obviously we've had other Indian
developers come in and we've had the interviews and we've
asked similar questions, like it's like, what are your lessons learned?
And like how what kind of advice would you give
to other people who might be inspired to do something similar,
And all of them, without fail would say, just don't
do what we did whatever, we don't.

Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
Do that thing, Okay. So I'm consistently it's.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
Very consistent, all kinds of different lessons learned, though, which
is fantastic.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
And you know, I think that the lesson learned I
give anybody that does anything, really, but you hear lots
of speakers talk about this is that if you want
to do anything. You have to accept that you're not
going to succeed the first time or the tenth time.
You have to keep pushing at it, and you don't
just assume because one failure it's a give up, right,
really passionate about it. You've got to keep finding ways

(01:04:51):
to make things work. And things aren't going to always work.
And that's really the problem is they said, well, then
why am I going to do this? You're right. If
you don't hear that and say, well, then I want
to try harder, then maybe this isn't the thing you
want to do.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Yeah, right, that makes a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:05:06):
You see it and say, wow, this is a challenge
and I'm I'm driven. I like what I'm doing, and
I'm seeing good responses and I'll find ways to you know,
make good on problems that we run into. And that
sort of thing is where you see the developers that
are able to launch a product and sometimes even succeed
with it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
No, I like that lean startup mentality, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
Yeah, but not lean like thin, lean like lean into it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
See, yeah, exactly exactly. And you know, because we haven't
heard Dress, maybe we'll ask Dress the same question too, like,
what are some of the lessons learned from from your perspective.

Speaker 4 (01:05:43):
Oh yeah, it's it's well, And this is kind of
the way I think of it is how it goes
back to how we are our perspective on just designing
everything is iteration on iteration on iteration. We're constantly learning, right,
this is This is not a one one stops for us.
We're not just releasing something and saying, hey, this is it.

(01:06:03):
We're actually trying to actively improve ourselves over time. And
for me, it's just learning new techniques, learning how to
make my processes faster. You know, anything and everything that
will help along the way. I'm willing to learn and
really lean into that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:20):
So I know that you didn't say this drafts, but
I think the other thing is you intuitively understood that
to get a product out you have to get people
who are interested in it, and to do that, you've
got to get things out there as soon as you can.

Speaker 4 (01:06:35):
True, I'm always.

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
He's willing to throw stuff out and he does all
the visual stuff, does the marketing, and he's just naturally
talented at that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
Well, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
I love the agile thinking from me. I think you
guys do tech jobs. I was like, I believe it.
These guys are agile to the core.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
You don't talk about that in game dev, do you.
I don't know how that works.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
I mean, agile game development. What even is that?

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
That's what we're doing once you get all the access
out of because immediately, no.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
I appreciate it. I'd like to ask something about that line,
but let me get let's get back to Derek first,
because I know you may have a couple more questions
I do want to hop back into because I'm interested
in that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
Yeah, so I do have a few more lined up here.
So I heard a little bird told me am I
allowed to say this on the air here that Mazi,
you're you're going to be changing your employment situation a
little bit is here pretty soon? Right? Is that?

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
Yeah? I'm here. And the way that I would say
this is nothing about my employment status has changed, and
I haven't haven't actually made any official notice. And I
suppose if anyone who knows me in the real world
is hearing this, just plug your ears. But the fact
is that to get this game launched, it's going to
need more of my time.

Speaker 2 (01:07:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
When we had the publisher, it was more of draft
race time because he was doing a lot of the map.
We have three hundred plus maps, seeds and a ton
of the work for all the visual stuff. But I
need to do the other pieces, right. I need the
battle system and all these other technical components. I've got
to write more story. I've got to tweak the story.
There's a lot of things I need to do. So
to achieve that, I am working out a plan with

(01:08:18):
leadership from my day job so I can do more
time on this project. I likely won't leave my company,
so that's one sort of safety net. Is I get
paid well for my job. Why would I ever do
indie dev because it just does not pay as well.
But I love this so much. This is the thing
that really makes me light up. So even though I

(01:08:39):
need some stability so I have to do the day job,
I'm going to be really spending a lot more time
on the project, especially after the Kickstutter ends. That's the
current plan. I don't have the solid time yet, so
we'll make official announcements like you know, Mott. I'll probably
even put my real name out there because I have
to anyway. It just you know takes lead of you know,

(01:09:02):
draftsy Games or whatever. But whatever the case is, it
is coming as news. So this is sort of the
early you know hints, that's what's going to happen, and
my time will be much much more focused on this
project than it has been in the recent past.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
Wow, that's exciting.

Speaker 3 (01:09:19):
So I'm excited. Yeah, I'm terrified but excited.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
Yeah, that's those two way too often go hand in hand.
I think the really exciting stuff is also a little terrifying, right, true.
And uh and and you know one of these other
things that's that's happened relatively recently. Well, I don't know
how how recent was this? Your Your kickstarter has reached
its funding level, right.

Speaker 3 (01:09:43):
We reached our first thank you, thank you. Not only
we reach our funding level, we reached our first stretch goal. Hey,
we will be officially adding a small customizable house in
the game that you essentially have your own home.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
Oh my gosh. Oh that's fun.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
Ah man, I still remember the first RPG house I
ever bought, an earth Bound. I couldn't really customize it
very much, but you know it had a view.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
Yeah. Well, I mean I actually didn't play earth Bound,
so I don't know what the view is. There's a
view joke there, but.

Speaker 2 (01:10:14):
Oh yeah, it's missing one of the walls and it
just overlooks a big ocean scape.

Speaker 3 (01:10:21):
Yeah. The first house I ever owned in the game
was actually Oblivion that was like more modern style, but oh.

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
Man, yeah, yeah my Oblivion house. Like I installed so
many mods to like connect all the houses too, and like,
oh dude, there's this. You know what, we'll talk about
Oblivion mods left.

Speaker 3 (01:10:37):
I will find different later. But yes, yes, we have
hit our goal and we've hit our stretch goal. I
do want to say this. No one told me I
had to say this, but backer Kit is the company
that supports kickstarter projects and they do their own thing.
They also have a marketing division, and they reached out
to us saying, hey, we'd love to help you market
your product before the end of your campig and they've

(01:11:00):
been doing amazing things. I mean, since they've been helping us,
the numbers have grown really quickly. That's why we've hit
our first goal. So I just think that's really amazing.
Anyone doing a Kickstarter should definitely look into options for
connecting with backer Kit, because they just they're on it.
It's awesome to hear.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
The last developer we were interviewing also was doing some
stuff with Backer Kitten, and yeah, they had nothing but
good things to say about that as well.

Speaker 3 (01:11:31):
So yeah, man, they got it. Man. They know I
work at a marketing company for my day job, and
I know lots about marketing, and what they're doing is right,
the proper marketing for this type of industry. This is
like I haven't seen it yet. I've been working in
game dev for five years. On the side, I have
not seen proper marketing. This company knows what it's like

(01:11:52):
the market nice.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
Awesome, that's a resounding endorsement. That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:11:58):
There you go. They didn't tell me that, but.

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
I mean if they did, though, would that be proper marketing.

Speaker 5 (01:12:05):
Probably In this case, it's the proof is in the pudding, right,
So we're seeing real concrete results and that's amazing, right.

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
Okay, Uh, Derek, I was gonna ask you if you've
fielded any questions from chat that have come in over time.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
We have some questions. I I do have some of
my own as well. So well, I mean, I guess
it's your show, way, Oh no, it's it's Drass's show clearly.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
Oh that was yeah, okayats.

Speaker 3 (01:12:43):
Show or draft the one who's not talking as much.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
You know, next next Sunday, it's not going to be
me and Derek here, It's just going to be Mons.

Speaker 2 (01:12:49):
Draft, just me, the Disembodied Boys. I would watch that podcast.
I would watch that. I wouldn't watch it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
Okay, So a couple of things. And I think one
of the things coming from the perspective of someone who's
tried a game before. And you know, so I didn't
know that you were doing a kickstarter until sometime maybe
like maybe like two months ago or so, so that
you were thinking about doing it or you were posing
some things like hey, it's coming. So I clicked in.

(01:13:21):
I think I think this happened when I was in Asia.
I was I was in Vietnam at the time, and
I was just catching up on news. I clicked in.
I see all the things. A bunch of things changed
since the time that I played a game, Like the
arts change, like some of the key arts, the pixel
arts change. I wasn't too surprised about the key arts
like that that happens sometimes, but the pixel art that

(01:13:42):
the main characters. A lot of things have changed visually,
like what would the like catalysts I guess of going
into you know, make a whole bunch of changes, even
though some of these things were already established, and like
I figured, there's got to be like a really good
reason to go in to make some of these changes.

Speaker 3 (01:14:04):
Yeah, yes, there were reasons. First off, the iterative notion
you mentioned that, like the iterative development. We have been
doing that since we started working on the game. As
I said earlier, so the idea that we would be
open to making changes when it makes sense has been
permeated everything that we ever do, and when we recognize

(01:14:27):
something is necessary, we start addressing it. And before we
launched the early access we knew the original key art
we did, which was by I'm not sure what we
call the artists Hannah or the person who does Crescent
Sun there on Twitter. Their arts great, we like it.
It really helped us solidify some of our vision. But

(01:14:49):
we wanted to up the notch a few bits before
we launched the game, and we had some trouble with
our publisher and getting some art before launch, and then
we didn't really like the art we ended up with,
and so at that time we had said, well, let's
see what else is out there, and that's where we
found most Ki or Mosquie I think it's most key

(01:15:09):
and he's amazing. His art fit exactly the style. It's
sort of like that Chrono trigger asque because the it's
a digital print into paper that then is watercolored and
then scanned and then put back in the computer. So
it really is just an amazing unique style. And mixed
blending is sort of what we do right. It's three

(01:15:30):
D two D this physical and digital, and so I
really liked that notion. And so when something makes sense
and we know that it's a necessary upgrade, we do it.
That's just our style. That's what we've always done. And
so the pixel Art update, we said, you know, our
characters are okay, but we'd really love them to stand
out more. So we got an artist named Wayne Kubiak

(01:15:51):
who has done a lot of different games. He worked
on a case story, I believe, amongst other things, and
so we had him him help us with some of
his art. We also had a person named Kapa Joe
who did our first iteration of Pyra's changes, but he
got too busy to be able to.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
Work with us.

Speaker 3 (01:16:09):
And so it's just like every single step of the
way when you see changes happen is because either we
originally always plan to change it and we just have placeholders,
or we recognize over time that the where it is now,
whatever the thing is, it's been outdated by where we're
trying to go, So we just reconi you have to
bring it up a level. I mean, people don't love

(01:16:31):
the UI and I don't either. The UI is still
considered placeholders. So when you say what's going to change,
you're going to see that the whole UI itself is
going to become much tighter, much more pixel like, much
better in terms of the flow. You know, people like, oh,
the UI sucks, Like, yeah, well you're right, because it's
not our focus yet.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:16:50):
So every step of the way we're just slowly enhancing
and improving for you guys. You guys are going to
recognize this. Back in the day when you had images
loading on a website, they had this one where it
starts really pixelated. Oh, he slowly gets more and more definition.
That's kind of what we're doing with the game, right,
It's just slowly getting more and more definition every pass.
We make it look more refined and more refined as

(01:17:12):
we go.

Speaker 1 (01:17:14):
That's fantastic, And so I think you edi answered some
of the questions that I was going to ask too,
which is like, what else you know you would be
coming in, Drery, you got something for us there.

Speaker 2 (01:17:26):
I was just gonna ask another self serving question here
about like so I noticed that. I mean, you said
that you're going to change some of the UI, and
I'm like, are you going to keep the the Quintet
style font there, the illusion of Guya Terra Enigma soul
Blazer font that I love so very much. If not,
I understand, but you.

Speaker 3 (01:17:46):
Know, sure. The problem is we're using a like a
true type font and in the pixel game, that means
you lose the pixel feel because trying to make it
like high definition and if you put that along pixelized backgrounds,
it looks out of place.

Speaker 2 (01:18:02):
Yeah, so if it doesn't match up perfect.

Speaker 3 (01:18:05):
Right, right, So we might try to make a a
bitmap version of it and see how that turns out
so we can get a pixelives look from it. We're
not sure yet. We've just started talking to some interface
designers and seeing if we can get some interesting ideas
from that. So there's more to come. I'm not sure yet,
but you know, if we don't use exactly that font,

(01:18:27):
we'll probably have something that's similar.

Speaker 2 (01:18:29):
Okay, I may be heartbroken, but that's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
I'll probably get all Derek, but a greater good.

Speaker 2 (01:18:37):
I'll take one for the team, Mako.

Speaker 3 (01:18:39):
I wanted to say something really quick just because you'll
find it funny. We do actually do sprints for our
development I figure figure long sprints. The only thing we
don't yet, The only thing we don't do is actually
deliver on everything that defines everyone. It's hard because everything
going on, but we do actually have sprints that we
close out the sprint every month and then we move

(01:18:59):
every tickets the next one.

Speaker 2 (01:19:01):
Yeah, that's what the that's what the profect period is for.

Speaker 1 (01:19:03):
Yeah, and we.

Speaker 3 (01:19:04):
Don't do either because we're always doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:19:06):
And everyone complaining about Maazi.

Speaker 3 (01:19:09):
Of course, I mean I wouldn't do the first time.

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
Perspective is just going, yeah, I shouldn't have done that.

Speaker 1 (01:19:16):
So I'm about to go into a bit of a
nerd territory, but in a different sense because I'm in
I'm in project management, and I this this is the
kind of nerding for me, so it's always interesting to me.
You're one of the few people that I feel like
have like the technical and business appreciation for like an

(01:19:39):
agile development process, but also game development. And that's the
thing that's kind of hard to reconcile, I think for
a lot of companies because when you're doing agile, what
are the some of the tenants where you have active
communication with the stakeholders, right, or the people who ultimately
pays your bills, very different from a software engineer or

(01:20:01):
typical software engineer perspective with known owners and they're kind
of paying you like upfront versus like building a product. Right,
So there's the product perspective, but not only that, this
is like an artistic slash. It's not like a strictly
functional piece of software. Right. There's a lot of things
that's in there that even if you were to communicate

(01:20:23):
with your community and treat them like they're the stakeholders,
it's it's hard to get any kind of consensus on
you know, what it is that they truly want or
like and dislike, Like, how have you been able to
like reconcile this sort of like agile process and like
continuous improvement, but like what are you even in improving? Right?

(01:20:44):
Like it's a lot easier for I think like commercial software,
Like it's either the thing works or the thing doesn't work.
You can complain about the UI, but it's not going
to be as big of a thing versus like, well,
I just don't like this character, or the colors too hard,
or like you know, the screen doesn't like low. Well
for me, I'd love to hear some of their perspective

(01:21:06):
from you, as far as like, how have you made
agile work for game development? I know it's.

Speaker 3 (01:21:17):
No I don't answer question, but I think the thing
is that your question actually implies some things that I
think are actually not totally correct about what the problem is.
The problem space isn't doing agile or even how you
get requirements. The problem space are the fact that you're
taking an area of product where people care passionately about

(01:21:40):
the thing you're providing. Where in the B two B business,
even if you work directly with consumers, the reason they
don't care so much if the fonts isn't perfect, it
is because they're focused on the functionality less than the form.
Usually yeah right, And so the form in a retro
RPG is so important to your consumers that they will

(01:22:01):
tell you how much they hate what you're doing if
it doesn't fit what they're looking for. And you I
like in like B two B business, you just don't
get that very much, right unless it's super terrible product,
and people still buy salesforce. I mean that's sort of
like you know, they don't care because they care about
the function is providing or the precedes you get from
buying the product, and that's just more business, so you

(01:22:23):
accept more and you get less mad about it. And
the user base is broader because you have little like
micro transactions, you can do that. People are willing to
pay five bucks a month for something that you build
up into recurring revenue. But the model for video games
is way different. Unless you're doing a online product. You
make the product, you sell the product. So you take

(01:22:46):
two years making a product, three years, five, five years,
you know whatever, and then you launch the product and
that's it. Like you might support it, but when someone
bought the product, they.

Speaker 2 (01:22:55):
Own it are.

Speaker 3 (01:22:56):
Product, right, So agile. The reason ATAM doesn't technically fit
is because agiles meant for places where you're continuously improving
on a product that you're making recurring revenue onn so
like how you collect all that stuff doesn't matter. Be
real here, Like the consumers are great. If you want
to talk about stakeholders. Man, try to make an ARTPG

(01:23:18):
and a retro style, people will tell you exactly what
you should be making, right and right. You know, that's
not the problem. It's not the problem at all. It's
more about team size, timing, being able to release the
full product versus a portion of it. You know, a
B to B product or a B two C product.
You can release part of the product, people pay for

(01:23:41):
it and be happy with what you provided. We have
an early access game out here where you, yeah, people
have paid us for the product, but they're waiting for
us to finish it. Right, You got to get it
done now. Now you're on the hook to completely finish
and have an end point. You never get that in
the consumer space. So that's what I find really funny.
Like fast, what's fascinating to me is more about the

(01:24:03):
business model and less about the production model. I do
think though, that in games people could benefit from things
like agile processes. Rapid delivery of pieces of code or
product can help you learn really quickly what's going to
work or not. Learning how to tailor it to customers
is really easy in my opinion, on video games, because

(01:24:27):
like I said, interesting, right, that's the hard part is
not the hard part at all.

Speaker 1 (01:24:31):
Yeah. I always feel like the consumers are very much
used to the waterfall because and it's true, right, Like, obviously,
you you tell me to release date. I buy the game,
I play the game, I own the game. That's the date.
That's when you're done, and I and when whatever I see.
Obviously there are day one patches all kinds of things,

(01:24:53):
but for the most part, I expect a polished finished
product that day, like literally definition waterfall, I don't I
don't know how comfortable or how maybe got comfortable is
not the way way, how how much they're used to
seeing this kind of like continuous improvement thing. It's great

(01:25:14):
because I work in that feel, but I don't know
how many people understand that. So I wanted to bring
that out and just really make sure people understand, like
why things have done that way, Like there's definitely reasons
to this madness and not like, well, why don't you
just build a thing and then just sew it to

(01:25:36):
me and then it's all good and perfect. That's not
how things really should work, right. Well, but this is also.

Speaker 3 (01:25:43):
A luxury product, right, Yeah, it's not a functional product
that provides ongoing value. It is a product that provides entertainment.
That is, if you miss a piece of entertainment or
you lose your interest, that's it. You've lost it. There's
plenty of other products out there that provide entertainment and
instant gratification, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing
wrong with the people who say, I'm done with your game.

(01:26:05):
I never want to play it again. But you usually
get one shot. That's what they say, right, once you've
sold it, once they've played it, if they're done, they
may never come back to it, because because all is
is your interest in entertainment, as opposed to this is
a product that provides some daily value to my life.
And that's why agile doesn't really work in this context

(01:26:25):
because whether the consumer even understands agile or not, they've
got other things that they can occupy their minds with.

Speaker 1 (01:26:33):
People who work in agile doesn't understand agile.

Speaker 3 (01:26:36):
So well, yeah, no one's ever really done good agile.
Whatever that is, right, So.

Speaker 1 (01:26:40):
Whatever that is, No, that that is great insight, and
and thank you so much for that. Like, I just
feel like every time we do an interview, right, there's
always something special, different or unique about the way they
do things or their inspirations or I don't the kind
of things I find really interesting and I'm glad that

(01:27:02):
you're talking about like oh, yeah, we're yeah, you're hitting
up all the keywords like, oh, we're doing continuous improvement.
It's like, h yeah, excuse me, uh your sprints?

Speaker 3 (01:27:11):
What you don't have the CD part of it yet though?
Yeh I TD continues delivery. That's not quite there.

Speaker 2 (01:27:19):
Day thirty patch, Yeah, every sprint we're going to new
patches out, But how long do you suppose you will
like continue to support like implementation? But this guy has
to be some kind of end date to it. Like again,
like sometimes there are like day one patches, Like do
you anticipate having to support this game for some time

(01:27:42):
at the release?

Speaker 1 (01:27:43):
Or uh? Is that something that goes into like the model,
like do you expect? Is that something that people should expect?

Speaker 3 (01:27:55):
I mean even just from people I know who do
gains and have launched them. Like if you guys know
Wallaber is he than the Jelly Car World game and
various other ones. He's a very close friend of mine.
We talk and nerd out about game stuff all the time.
He supports his games when there's issues to resolve. I
think that from my understanding, as long as the game
is selling and making some kind of revenue to offset

(01:28:17):
the cost of having to support it, then there should
be support for it. And there could even be DLC
or new content or new features. So there's no reason
not to other than you know, once you run out
of money, you run out of money, right You got
to find a way to continue your business. And I think,
by the way, that's what a lot of indie devs
don't think about is you can't just make one product.

(01:28:37):
You've got to always be thinking about your next one
if you want to have a business, because you have
to make money for your business to exist. And there
is an inherent conflict in this because consumers want what
they want right away. I spend twenty dollars on your game,
I expect, you know, top tier support, and I don't
have any. I don't gain say that that perspective, but

(01:28:58):
I can tell you as a indie studio, if everybody
is knocking at your door for a feature enhancement or improvement,
you will never be able to make them all happy. Yeah,
And so you have to as a business, you always
have to juggle being able to support the current users
and also produce things that will make you more money,
and supporting an existing product makes you no money. Yeah,

(01:29:20):
unless it's a game breaking bug that will prevent people
from buying it. Fixing a bug doesn't make money for
the company. All it does is keep your current user
base happy with you, right, which I again I'm not
adverse to, but I'm just being practical about. Oh yeah,
how that structure works.

Speaker 2 (01:29:35):
Makes a lot of sense to be I mean, that's
that's that's good because you know, you want your business
to succeed and continue making games that people like to play.
So I think it's for the benefit of everybody that
that you have that sort of mentality.

Speaker 1 (01:29:49):
Yeah, as that's a trade off between like maybe sometimes
there's a trade off between business success versus like, you know,
just being pro consumer.

Speaker 3 (01:29:59):
Perhaps they call it opportunity cost right, And this industry
is very interesting from my learnings, which is as far
as I know, the going thinking is most indie depth
studios and I'm not thinking of anyone specific, I'm just
saying the prevailing thought is most indie death studios won't
care what their consumers think. Right, A lot of them
I have a complaint. Everyone comes in expecting the devs

(01:30:20):
to say, well, you know, go pound sand right. They
they just don't care because everyone comes in hot. They're like,
I'm so mad about this thing, and you're a stupid face,
or they say other words, and then I say, you're right,
that's a problem. I agree, here's why, here's what we're
trying to do to resolve it. I completely understand if
you hate my guts. However, this is what we're trying

(01:30:41):
to do, and people get really surprised. Sadly, they get
really surprised when you respond that way. It's a lot
of work, because customer service is a lot of work,
and it takes away time from doing development. It's called
an opportunity cost, the opportunity of developing the game versus
responding to people's complaints or concerns on a board or whatever.

(01:31:04):
But our belief is that's paramount because they're the people
who buy your product. And I cannot believe that the
prevailing way that this industry works is that there's studios
that just completely ignore people. They don't tell them what's
going on. Everything is just hidden and opaque, and they're like, yeah,
someday we'll release this product. I'm not looking at anybody's
specific team cherry, but you know, like they don't. They

(01:31:29):
don't give the consumer, the players the respect that they
I think they deserve because they're the people that buy
your product. But yeah, people still buy their products, so
I don't know. Maybe that's why they don't, because like, well,
they'll buy it anyway whether we care or not. But
I just we personally believe that it's important. And as
much as it might cost our time, my belief is,

(01:31:52):
do it make it really hard on ourselves and then
find a way to optimize it right, get better at
what we're doing so that it doesn't take as much
of our time, better at supporting our customers, make a
better product from the start, learn what people like by
listening to what they are complaining about, and then move
forward with a better approach. And we're going to mess
up all over the place, hence our Kickstarter messing up

(01:32:13):
all over the place, changing what's on the reward tiers
and all that stuff, but we will be there to
explain why and try to correct it moving forward.

Speaker 1 (01:32:21):
Absolutely, and I agree with you like it customer services.
Absolutely And and I'm actually surprised to hear you know
that that is not really a thing that exists in
like the indie space. I mean, I will probably play
a little devis advocate and say maybe a lot of
these developers don't really have the kind of professional experience

(01:32:45):
to know how to even deal with this, you know
a lot of them. Sometimes I think they have like
a passion project and they create it and it's like, oh,
this is the thing that I want to put out,
like we've been very passionate about itustomer service, business, like
all these things are just not part of their skill
set or part of their repertoire of things that they

(01:33:08):
know how to handle. It's just I know how to
program and make pretty art, and I put a story
in a game together, and that's the extent of my
contribution to our experience. All this other stuff that you're
talking about, No idea never met them.

Speaker 3 (01:33:24):
So right, it's not easy. It's a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:33:27):
It's not easy. Yeah. It takes a whole you know,
career profession to like understand not only understand the importants
of it, and know how to properly deal with these
kinds of situations. It takes a lot, And we're glad
that You're bringing this up because you know, as companies,

(01:33:49):
I think, evolve, and as this entire feel progress, we're
expecting to see more of these great things that we
will come to expect. So you're sort of raising the
bar and I appreciate that. Speaking of things that you
know you're you're still looking to put in, are there
additional well sorry speaking of new games, because you were

(01:34:12):
talking about like what you got to think about the
next thing, like, what are some other things that would
you be able to share with us if you have
some other things that you are already thinking about.

Speaker 3 (01:34:22):
Yeah, yeah, we can. We've we've talked a little bit
about this off and on with other people too. So
given that we only have one product, what we'll very
likely do is take another game in a genre of
a similar era and take our style and apply it
to it. I mean, if if Ulterium Shift is way successful,

(01:34:44):
then we might also set our sites for a sequel
at some point, but you know, we already have planned
for that if it ever happens. But we're not holding
our breath. But you know, if we get to the
level of success that we can make this our daily business,
daily job. The next thing we're looking at our game
in the ARPG genre. You know, one of my favorites

(01:35:06):
was the Zelda Link to the Past. I think that's
all right, Yeah, I always forget these names now, but
I just like the the style and the feel of
that game, and with the the two point five D
view that we use, there's more interesting things we can
do with that. So turning that into something that's more
like an ARPG would be one idea that we have considered.

(01:35:29):
We also have Flame of Hope, and we have other
you know, little things we've been knocking around we could
always take and turn into some small game. Maybe maybe
not as big as Alterarium Shift, but who knows, right, Yeah,
but we like the style, the aesthetic that we have.
I think we would expand on and then we would
set our sites for rather things depending on how that goes.

Speaker 1 (01:35:51):
Thank you. And one last question this is when Tyler
from something classics, they want to know what your Tyler
ratio is developed team. They need to know the Tyler ratio.
How many Tylers is in your team out of how
many people?

Speaker 3 (01:36:08):
Zero?

Speaker 1 (01:36:09):
Oh no, it's the zero Tyler game.

Speaker 3 (01:36:13):
Zero Tyler effects. Zero Tyler's like zero but zero Tyler.

Speaker 2 (01:36:17):
Wow, that's awkward Tyler.

Speaker 3 (01:36:22):
You know something classic people so we get along with.

Speaker 1 (01:36:25):
Them makes me feel the next iteration, I suggest bringing
a Tyler on board. I've heard, I don't know, there's
no scientific proof on this, but I've heard that the
more Tyler's you have on a game, the better the
game will turn out. So we would highly recommend adding
more Tyler's.

Speaker 3 (01:36:43):
To I don't have legally changing my plate to get
a job. I mean hope, okay, over there at something
classic classic?

Speaker 1 (01:36:52):
Oh no, oh, I mean it could be any Tyler,
any Tyler in the world, Like, as long as they're Tyler.

Speaker 2 (01:36:57):
Fine, doesn't have to get Steven Tyler. I mean that
be weird, but okay, it'd work.

Speaker 1 (01:37:03):
First or last name, by the way.

Speaker 2 (01:37:04):
Yeah, yeah, liv Tyler. Let's let's go.

Speaker 3 (01:37:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:37:08):
So, Derek, final question.

Speaker 2 (01:37:11):
Sure, yeah, I know that we've already kept you well
past well we should planned for an hour, but uh,
but my final question for you here is, uh, you know,
is there anything that this entire time you've been thinking
to yourself like, oh man, I really wish I got
a chance to talk about this thing, and they never

(01:37:32):
asked the right question. This is this is this is
my question is what should I have asked you that
I haven't asked you about already.

Speaker 3 (01:37:42):
I find it funny because I was going to suggest
that you ask about future projects, and then you decided
to ask that, So you're forcing my hand here. We
got to go about with something else on the fly.
So one thing that I think would be a good
question that I would want to know, and I touched
on it a little bit about how I perceive indie studios,

(01:38:04):
but I think even just how we perceive the indie
studio space and how how we perceive ourselves versus other
studios and what you know, like are we opposed to
these people? Are there are our enemies or mortal enemies
that were trying to be better?

Speaker 1 (01:38:19):
Like?

Speaker 3 (01:38:19):
What what sort of philosophy do we follow with just
the space in general? Something classic is a great example, right.

Speaker 2 (01:38:26):
Tyler and rivals.

Speaker 3 (01:38:29):
Yes, the reason we don't have any Tyler's is because
of that Tyler.

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
Oh that one Tyler.

Speaker 3 (01:38:36):
You've heard me Tyler, it's on now. That would be
a question I might ask. I will say that I
just kind of pulled that one out and through it
to see what happens. But uh, I'm happy to answer
that question though, please do okay, so here it goes.
I've seen YouTubers talk about this. There are people in

(01:38:59):
any indie that perceive a zero zero sum game, which
means it can be only one right the high Lander theory.
You gotta go chop everyone's heads off so you get
all the power. A lot of games like Triple A
Studios have acted like that for ages, you know, Nintendo
and so on. There is a lot of competition and
not a lot of cooperation in the indie space. I don't.

(01:39:22):
I think it's the reverse. I think there needs to
be a lot of cooperation and friendly competition, but there's
no reason to compete against each other. And so if
people are getting into this space, you should recall or
you should remember that there are other people out there
that want to work together, even if you're not working
on the same project. We have a small group, the

(01:39:44):
growing group actually of RPG developers. I'm fairly certain something
classic is in the group. I'm not sure exactly which
mix of people are in that group, but you know,
like select people from those various products, and it's great
just having people to talk to in a similar genre
following a cooperative thought process, just because there's a game

(01:40:08):
out there we don't love, doesn't mean we can't talk
to those people. Sure, not that we are. I've hinted
at a game that I'm not going to talk to
those the people who own that game, because they're also
more like an ace Heide studio now. But at the
same time, we would never take a perspective that we're
against anybody else out there, because the fact is, I
don't think the consumers want that. The consumers benefit if

(01:40:28):
we work together, not if we work against each other,
because typically that means you get, you know, combined product ideas,
or you get, you know, something in a similar genre
that touches on things that wasn't in one but in another,
and you can buy both games. And I just love
that notion because I've always thought of this whole. Oh
it's secretive. You know, I work in B two B businesses.

(01:40:50):
Don't tell anybody what you're working on, and I don't
think that's how it is. I think Indy dev and
working with your consumers, absolutely, you need to work directly
with your consumers, but also working with your perceived competitors.
Someone could be making exactly the same type of game.
But if we're collaborating and talking about our ideas and
sharing those people's games. That's only better for everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:41:12):
So what I'm getting from this is that you and
Tyler are working on dual crossover DLCs for your projects.

Speaker 3 (01:41:25):
Yeah. Yeah, and we're not going to use the quintent font.
We're gonna use the quartet font.

Speaker 1 (01:41:29):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:41:32):
Every time someone says the quintent I'm like, what are
you talking about? Why are you talking about quartet? And
I'm like, oh, wait, no, no, no, that's different. I'll
start with.

Speaker 2 (01:41:42):
I'm just saying if I don't if I don't get
to play as Atlas in quartet, then uh.

Speaker 3 (01:41:52):
Now, so I'm not sure if that's gonna work.

Speaker 2 (01:41:54):
You're gonna have to be some kind of Oh well,
we'll see, we'll see what happened.

Speaker 1 (01:41:58):
We'll see and and and dress. Do you have any
questions in your mind that you feel like we should
have definitely asked? How dare Dey's two Buffo not asked
me this question?

Speaker 4 (01:42:10):
No, I'm a little more relaxed than Nazi.

Speaker 1 (01:42:15):
Or maybe how about if there are things that you're
excited that you want to share that we may not
have been able to touch on about the game anything
at all no pressure, just just our latest update.

Speaker 2 (01:42:29):
But we already kind of you know, touched on that.

Speaker 3 (01:42:32):
Yeah, unfortunately Dress has not also been feeling well, so
you make him think on the fly when he's not
feeling well, it's not gonna go well.

Speaker 1 (01:42:38):
But yeah, I hope you feel better by the way,
appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:42:42):
I will answer that question for him, though. The things
that we're getting really excited about with the seventy five
percent release, yeah, keep an eye out for the new
battle system that is I mentioned it earlier, but that
is going to be, I hope, answering the fundamental question
what this is really going to be about.

Speaker 1 (01:42:58):
And I am so excited to play this game again.
And I'm not just saying that because we're interviewing you,
Like I've said it, like on my person several streams
away from all of you, Like you wouldn't have heard
what I said, but I said it. You can ask
the people who are there, Like I've seen the changes
and I can't wait to like really get my hands

(01:43:20):
on it and experience that world. I mean is great
seeing the video and of course it gets me excited,
but I want to play the game. I'm also just
waiting for that, and for anyone who's curious, like why,
I'm like just constantly pulling drass. We were talking earlier
and this is like last week, and Mazi had specifically say, hey,

(01:43:43):
I want Dress to speak more. So I'm like making
sure that we give him some opportunity to, you know,
chime in. But he is, in fact not really feeling
well today, and we really appreciate you showing up even
though you're not feeling your best. So thank you so
much again.

Speaker 4 (01:44:00):
Yeah, I honestly didn't want to miss in. I like
talking to you guys, so thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:44:03):
Like you so much for being here. Everybody listening at home,
make sure you run your anti virus just to make
sure your computer doesn't get sick. Yeah it's contagious. Sorry
all right, Well, thank you guys so much for having
for coming on here. And uh yeah maybe maybe post lunch,
maybe maybe post like version one, we can maybe we'll

(01:44:28):
do this again. See, yeah, things are different, So thanks
again for coming on guys. Have a great rest of
your night.

Speaker 1 (01:44:33):
And yeah, thank you so much much.

Speaker 3 (01:44:35):
Thank you for having us appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:44:37):
Take care. Oh boy, that was that was quite the.

Speaker 2 (01:44:43):
I know, quite the interview. It was a lot of fun.
You Yeah, we longer than I thought it would. But man,
I am so happy because that was such a good interview. Guys,
I cannot wait to play that game. I have to wait,
but I can't.

Speaker 1 (01:45:01):
It's hard to hype responsibly sometimes, Like we say it
all the time, but it's hard. Man.

Speaker 2 (01:45:06):
If only there was some sort of T shirt that
one could wear that would remind me, and only if
only it was able to be bought from shop dot
super Derek ARPGs dot com with free shipping on using
promo code Turbo. Just that out there. Oh yeah, no,
I mean that might be a thing.

Speaker 1 (01:45:26):
We should put that the description. That's what we should do.

Speaker 2 (01:45:29):
Oh maybe I will, that would be all right?

Speaker 1 (01:45:30):
Yeah, so yeah, you know what you need to do, Derek,
is you need that same shirt hype responsibly, but in
reverse so that when people look in the mirror, they
can see hype responsibly on the mirror.

Speaker 2 (01:45:46):
You know. I was thinking would be even cooler as
if it flipped it around backwards and it was the
different it has said irresponsible hype or something like that.
I think that would be you know, I have received
some requests for like the Nega version of that shirt
that just says hype irresponsibly. I'd say do it, man,

(01:46:07):
I'm kind of I'm kind of interested in what that
would look like. But hey, bold fonds or maybe just
irresponsibly hyped would be another. That's that's a lot of
words for uh well, anyways, you know what we should do.
We should probably talk about some of the upcoming games
for this week, because holy cow, let's talk about hype.

Speaker 1 (01:46:27):
Should we talk about hype?

Speaker 2 (01:46:28):
Let's talk a little bit about hype.

Speaker 1 (01:46:30):
Yeah, So some games is you know, coming soon. Some
games has already come out. We're going to talk about
one because of all the hype that's surrounding it. This
title needs no introduction. It is Capcom's latest Maze Hunter
game that is out and it's already hitting get this
all time peak of one point three eight million concurrent players?

(01:46:55):
What on Steam alone? Just Steam, just theme and that's sorry,
that's number I think that's number six or number five
on their all time highest concurrent already.

Speaker 2 (01:47:09):
That's wild.

Speaker 1 (01:47:10):
If Capcom's not doing something right and you haven't bought
their stocks yet, I don't know what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:47:15):
You know what's ridiculous. I actually looked a little bit
into this game. Did you already say the title of
the game?

Speaker 1 (01:47:22):
Yeah, okay, okay, I thought so. I just wanted to
make sure, well I didn't say the title. Sorry, I
just sat the newest Munsle Hunter. Yes, this Mansle Hunter.

Speaker 2 (01:47:30):
While I I know that last time we were talking
a little bit about how I wish I could be
excited about a Monster Hunter game. I actually kind of
watched more of a newer trailer for it the other
day when I was making my jair Ford Weekly update,
and I'm like, okay, this actually, this actually looks like
it's doing exactly what I asked it to do.

Speaker 1 (01:47:50):
And now some one said that in the comments there,
they're like, what he wanted more connective tissues. He must
have not seen like the new improvements that they added
in there. Well, clearly you have, yes, now, Yeah, so I.

Speaker 2 (01:48:04):
Feel like I should at least mention that before we
watch this trailer, let's let's check it out. Let's do it,
because I'm trying to I kind of responsibly still, but
you know, there's there's only so much we can do.
By the way, I think this trailer is four minutes long.
You get with that. Oh boy?

Speaker 1 (01:48:22):
Okay, so I've said many times on stream that MMOs
and games like Mascle Hunter I can't play because I
have this thing where once I start a game like this,
I would just like not put it down, and then
I just like to just ignore responsibilities and no one
just keep playing. I might have to break that because

(01:48:46):
one of my friends from like a long time ago,
he might be getting into this, and I've been trying
to get him to like hang out and do stuff,
and that might be my excuse to actually play this one.
It depends because he has to buy a PlayStation five

(01:49:07):
if he wants to join it, because he doesn't have
a gaming PC, so PS five is basically the easiest
way for him to do it. He did say that
he went yesterday. He doesn't watch this podcast, but if
he ever finds me on YouTube, and if you're listening
to this right now, I'm waiting for you to get
that PS five so that we can play this, I

(01:49:29):
might just like if he follows through and he actually
goes and get APS five and the game, I'd have
no choice. I'd have to honor, you know, the agreement
that I would have in that if he doesn't then
he does.

Speaker 2 (01:49:41):
The fact that is yeah, So there's I'll give it.
Since I have no external knowledge, I'll I'll give it
a fifty.

Speaker 1 (01:49:48):
To fifty, Kay, fifty to fifty. Yeah, I don't know this, man,
I can see why one point almost one point four
million people concurrently played the game on Steam alone. That's nuts,
just theme, not including Xbox, noncluding PlayStation. And I could

(01:50:09):
be wrong, but I get the feeling that this historically
like PlayStation oriented release. I mean, it came out, it
started coming out on like PS two, These these Monster
hundred games eventually also came to Wei.

Speaker 2 (01:50:23):
And Xbox and stuff. But like, I have to suspect
that the majority of players are probably on console. But
I could be wrong. I could be wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:50:34):
No, Yeah, I don't know what the ratio is. I mean,
i'd have to hopefully find some PlayStation numbers that can compare.
But I just feel like Capcom has really billed this
series from like a fairly niche like PSP PlayStation two
sort of ordeal to this like the key of experience.

Speaker 2 (01:50:59):
I remember playing Monster Hunter Freedom on PSP man, and
it was it was pretty wild, but it was it
was not like this in it. Yeah man, yeah, yeah, wow?
Did we watch that whole trailer already day we did. Okay,

(01:51:20):
they they're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:51:20):
Something right, man, capc CAP is doing something right. And
I and I think what they're doing. Part of that
at least is that they do a lot of real
uh and not like just for the uh for the motion, uh,
real outreach to gamers and their fans and like really

(01:51:43):
get their opinion, like, Okay, we had this thing, how
did you feel? What are some things you want to see?
What are some other ips you want to see? And
they sent out those surveys. We've talked about those services before,
but that's not like the only thing that they do,
Like that's one of the things that they do, but
they're they're any different kinds of outreach that they uh,
you know, reach out to international fans and really get

(01:52:06):
their opinions and really try to incorporate it. So I've
always find this kind of aspect very interesting, uh in
in how how they process all these information because obviously
you can't please everyone, right yeah, So and and there's like,
like Mazias said, there's opportunity costs, like you know, you
can I can only do one thing, right, I can't

(01:52:27):
do both. I can do one. How do you choose
which one. So some of these things is very fascinating.
But they're they're doing it right. We've said it many
times in the show, like they have so many successful
ips that they have continue continues success since like even
like Superintendo PlayStation Day. So clearly they're doing something right.

(01:52:49):
You know else is doing something right?

Speaker 2 (01:52:51):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:52:51):
Go ahead, Oh I was gonna say the game came
out on the twenty eighth. You can play this game
on PS five. I wrote the switch, but what I
meant to say was Xbox Series and PC via Steam.
Cross play is enabled by default between platforms. So if
you're wondering, why can I play with my friend on

(01:53:13):
Steam and I have a PS five, cross play is enabled,
but you can turn it off. You can't, but it's
enabled by defaults. So that means you can play on
any platform. You don't have to worry about it. If
your boy is playing on Steam and you're playing on Xbox,
you can totally do that.

Speaker 2 (01:53:31):
Nice. So you know who else has been doing pretty
pretty good these last few weeks or maybe not just
weeks even I'm talking about and I find it really
hard to say this, like it just doesn't roll it
out as it really doesn't it's Konami has actually been
doing okay, I mean, let's just say it's tentative. I

(01:53:56):
don't know, so I will say though, that one of
the most typed games right now that's coming out real soon.
Is we good in one and two HD remaster Gate
Rune and Dunan Unification Wars. I mean, the HD remaster
version of one and two is just around the corner.

(01:54:16):
The remake is gonna have some updated graphics, I mean
mostly the same graphics, but some some updated visuals, some
new character portraits by Junko Kowano, the original character designer,
which is awesome. So it's done in tandem with the
original staff. And then yeah, it's also updating sweeenon one
to match the style of Sweden two. I think that's big.

Speaker 1 (01:54:39):
I love that it's a personal pet peeve, like when
you have like two games and and they're fairly close enough,
just different enough, like I wish the older one looked
like the newer one so that they are fairly consistent,
like visually, and now we're getting that so awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:55:00):
New version is going to include fast forward uh during battles,
auto saves, and and some other school stuff too. Uh
you want to take a look at the trailer together
for this one. Do it all? Right? This is like,
this is wild because I know, do you know how
many times we have talked about this since it was announced?

Speaker 1 (01:55:21):
So many people, the the skepticism asking about this game,
the skepticism that I.

Speaker 2 (01:55:28):
Had at the at the forefront of this. I'll own
up to it. This is a different Konami. Uh yeah,
it's slowly being proven to me, slowly, slowly, but that
they are not the same company that they once were.

Speaker 1 (01:55:46):
The with the NFTs and the Cassiovania NFTs. Oh my god,
remember that? Uh huh, I not that one, not the
pinball right.

Speaker 2 (01:55:58):
Yeah, that's you know. I've heard that all of their
staff also recently got a pretty but pretty good bonus,
pretty pretty big raise bonus for doing a good job.
No way, that's what I'm here, and I don't know.
So you know they're doing. They're doing a new remake
of Metal Gear Solid three, and that looks cool as heck. Yeah,

(01:56:21):
if they're actually releasing this and they didn't release it
in time to like Undercut Aiden Chronicles, yeah, which is
one of my criticisms when that released. It was announced
the same week as the other it's like, oh, come on,
bad look. But but I think they might have.

Speaker 1 (01:56:40):
I mean, I'm kind of glad they didn't because I
don't think they would have necessarily like won, It would
have just been like it would hurt them too. I
feel like if they had actually absolutely yeah yeah, it
turned out to be incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:56:57):
Yeah. So anyways, this is coming out on the sixth,
so just a few days from today. I'm hyped, and
I know a lot of people are hyped as well.
Let's all just be hyped and let's be happy that
for the first time in ages, Sweak it Into will
cost less than like fifty bucks, because it's been like

(01:57:22):
such an expensive title up to this point. Like yeah,
oh two three hundred dollars for a copy of sweeko
in two. How about half the cost of this, of this,
of this bundle. That's that's pretty ye, pretty sick.

Speaker 1 (01:57:37):
My only hope is that they will eventually come out
with physical additions so I can own it forever.

Speaker 2 (01:57:45):
Has that not yet been announced?

Speaker 1 (01:57:46):
I yeah, I looked before the show, and it looks
like from their website anyways, it looks like everything is
digital only. I haven't checked, Like, yes, Asia because the
website is for like the Western really.

Speaker 2 (01:58:00):
He's maybe maybe I'll keep an eye on play Asia
because I feel like sometimes that might be a thing.

Speaker 1 (01:58:06):
Well, sometimes they'll let you know for Japan and the
like the Southeast Asia market only, but fingers crossed, fingers
crossed that we have a physical release. I haven't seen it,
but maybe. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:58:24):
So moving along, we have some new games.

Speaker 1 (01:58:27):
We're also announced.

Speaker 2 (01:58:29):
Oh, I told you it's coming out this week on
the sixth, just a few days we did. Oh I did,
I missed you listening? You silly good? I know, I know,
it's just we had such a great interview just now
you're still thinking about them, but you're with me. I
really understand.

Speaker 1 (01:58:45):
It's yeah, no, I mean, did you see Maazi? How
do you not keep thinking about that? Man?

Speaker 2 (01:58:52):
So agile? I know, I was so quick for a
minute there. I was afraid you guys are gonna start
talking about story points and stuff, and I was like, oh.

Speaker 1 (01:59:02):
No, no, I didn't want to want to ask them.
You ask somebody on their first day, you know you,
Saiaci sequence. So you're gonna wear some T shirts for us.

Speaker 2 (01:59:13):
So let's move along to new game announcements.

Speaker 1 (01:59:15):
He yes, let's move along to new game announcements. I agree, Uh,
you know what this is. This is an interesting one.
It's not gonna be something that everyone might find, uh interesting,
but I I hope you guys they should. Yeah, this
is from Idea Factory that's announced that they will be
bringing the long running dungeon crawler RPG series, uh Model

(01:59:39):
Monogatari to the West for the very first time with
their newest title, Mother Monogatari, Fia n So and the
Wondrous Academy. Let's think a look at the trailers that
we can have some idea on what this is about already.
Let's see, Oh, they do have physical. Nice. I didn't

(02:00:03):
find it, but since they have physical I'm gonna have
to go pre order that. Thank you for letting me know.

Speaker 2 (02:00:10):
So a lot of people don't know much about Mato Managatai.

Speaker 1 (02:00:13):
But yeah, so this series actually came from Compile before
they were Compound Hard from nineteen eighty nine. I didn't
know that. I thought I knew this series from like
maybe the two thousands, yeah, like es or something. But
this game has this series has been running since nineteen
eighty nine, and that was like the factory that I

(02:00:35):
found but it was also one of those games that
like never made it to the West. So this is
basically going to be like the introduction for a lot
of people. And it's the dungeon Crawler series, and I.

Speaker 2 (02:00:50):
Hear it's actually the original is pretty brutal and actually
there's some some gory stuff in it. It's pretty sick. Yeah,
so you know, it's it's pretty hardcore. So from the
screenshots I've seen of this game, like, I think that
the game it's already out in Japan right like and
it's just being localized now, yeah, I believe so.

Speaker 1 (02:01:12):
Yeah, so it's it looks.

Speaker 2 (02:01:14):
Like it may not actually be a first person dungeon
crawler in this remake, and I think I kind of
prefer that. What'd you say about the these the Oh
yeah there, I was gonna say, yes, I was gonna
say that that's actually the This was the progenitor of PuO,

(02:01:37):
which is also just a whole other like what really?

Speaker 1 (02:01:41):
Yeah, yeah, seriously, it's like, where do all these characters
from come from?

Speaker 2 (02:01:47):
Oh? This game is the series? Okay, which is weird,
but okay, it makes it weird that the.

Speaker 1 (02:01:54):
Spin off got the Western treatment than like the main
game right, Yeah, I know, and.

Speaker 2 (02:02:00):
It got localized as Doctor Robotix meeting Machine Man.

Speaker 1 (02:02:08):
So yeah, so this game is coming out sometime in
twenty twenty five for placed in four and four and
five and a switch, and I would really like to see,
uh hopefully in the next trade where I want to
see more uh you.

Speaker 2 (02:02:22):
Know, uh, actual gameplay. Yeah, actual gameplay for the folks.
But yeah, uh that is coming out and I'm excited
for it. Yeah. Well, Idea Factory also announced that they
will in fact be bringing the new Compile Heart third
person shooter called Scarlyd Salvation to the West as well.
So yeah, we have a trailer for that too, So

(02:02:43):
I'll go ahead and pull that up. Let's go.

Speaker 1 (02:02:47):
Yeah, we looked at this at some point, but it
wasn't announced that it would be coming to the West.

Speaker 2 (02:02:55):
I think you mentioned that. Yeah, I was gonna say,
I think you announced or we talked about that, and
you're like, I think it's going to come out in
the West, So that's why we talked about it. Why
am I in a place like this, That's what I
want to know.

Speaker 1 (02:03:09):
With the with the English voice acting, it is really nice.
I think you know, certain publishers have things that they
do pretty well, and perhaps this is a good opportunity.
I've never had issues with like Idea Factory deals.

Speaker 2 (02:03:26):
You could an AI, but you're using such a complicated expressions.
The contactor bio weapon.

Speaker 1 (02:03:32):
This is powerful as expected.

Speaker 2 (02:03:35):
I'm going to get out of here, I swear he
comes up.

Speaker 1 (02:03:39):
War aren't quite that simple?

Speaker 4 (02:03:42):
You didn't think.

Speaker 2 (02:03:43):
To tell me futuristic white yep, Well that that looks
pretty cool. I mean it looks like a third person shooter,
not really my thing, but maybe it's got some RPG
elements and stuff. But hey, we'll see. I guess usually.

Speaker 1 (02:04:01):
Games from like Idea Factory, they tend to like to
add RPG elements in like even even if it is
a third person shooter. Yeah, it's I prefer a place
more like in practice, like a third person action game,
but instead of being shooter mechanics yeaheah, so you just
have shooter mechanics instead.

Speaker 2 (02:04:22):
So this one's coming out on May nine for PlayStation four,
the PlayStation five, and PC via esteem.

Speaker 1 (02:04:30):
All right, this next one, what did you do?

Speaker 3 (02:04:36):
You know what?

Speaker 1 (02:04:37):
Let's just let's just look at the let's just look
at all right, let's just look at the trailer. It
seems I don't even want to just just look at it.

Speaker 2 (02:04:45):
I'm what is what am I.

Speaker 1 (02:04:53):
If this does not have Saturday Saturday Morning anime energy?
So this is a size scrolling platformer called uh Nico
Super Muscle Cat because you know.

Speaker 2 (02:05:16):
Oh yeah, you kept this super so bad and that's like, uh,
don't I get your underpants.

Speaker 1 (02:05:35):
I love the like ninety like anime sort of like
and that ridiculous like concept. I love this so much.

Speaker 2 (02:05:46):
This is absolutely nuts.

Speaker 1 (02:05:49):
I love this so much and I would play the
heck out of this. Uh So, yeah, this is coming
from developer Kamo Tacchi. Uh And again, this is a
size scrolling platformer. The game actually already is available on
PC via Steam, but on March nineteenth, this game will
also be available on PS four, PS five, Xbox One,

(02:06:11):
Xbox Series, and a Switch, so basically all modern platform
and if you already owned the game on Steam, on
the nineteen, you will see a major update, including full
voice over in English and Spanish in the estmanol. So
if you're looking for you know, some people just really

(02:06:32):
want games to be like dubbed in English, Well you
got it. You just need to wait until the nineteenth,
and all the updates will be on all the platforms.
So I'm I'm gonna wait, I'm gonna jump on this.
I have to jump on this.

Speaker 2 (02:06:47):
All right. Well, next up Symber Connect two. You might
know them for their work on the dot HAC series
or well, you might have remembered that they were gonna
work on you know, Final Fantasy vin re make but
ended up not or something. I'm not sure what happened there,
but anyways, what they have been working on though lately

(02:07:09):
are a new set of games called the u Fuga
Melodies of Steel series. And well, hey, cyber Connect too
is currently celebrating their thirtieth anniversary and they're hitting us
with this new announcement. Abilities of Steel three is coming
and you don't have to wait a long time at all.

(02:07:31):
The new game will be continuing to follow the children
of the Tyrannus, who will be sent on a journey,
this time to find Malt, the longtime series protagonist who
vanished without a trace. Yeah yeah, yeah, so we got
a trailer for it as well, and oh boys, this

(02:07:51):
was like the most exciting trailer that I saw last.

Speaker 1 (02:07:54):
Week with what you had a new Fuga.

Speaker 2 (02:07:59):
You know, that's the thing. I still haven't played a fugae.
I don't know, hasn't you know?

Speaker 1 (02:08:07):
For someone who has never played a fuga game, I
have seen Playfoods. But for someone who's personally never played
food I am oddly excited with the sequel because I
enjoyed the idea of the game. I just never have
the chance to play it. But I always loved the
idea making difficult choices, sacrifices and just like children standing

(02:08:32):
up against the odds. Everything appeals to my like sensibility.

Speaker 2 (02:08:37):
That does seem like kind of your cup of tea? Yeah, like,
oh yeah, I sacrificed one of my characters. Oh that's
so sad. Can I see how badly their body was maimed?
Or you have to get the worst ending for that?

Speaker 1 (02:08:51):
No, not just seeing the body name, but I want
to hear the voice acting us. They struggle to try
to stay alive, but that's very important to know they're
going to die. I want to hear them draw their
last breath.

Speaker 2 (02:09:03):
That's that's sick and twisted, and you may need therapy,
but I won't.

Speaker 1 (02:09:08):
Just like course party, that's all I mean.

Speaker 2 (02:09:11):
I get it. I like it too, But you know,
I'm just saying there are limits.

Speaker 1 (02:09:19):
No, but this game has very touching stories and I
just like what they're doing and if the second game
is anything to go by, like, even though they keep
and I don't know how they're doing it, they keep
the core mechanics for the most part, it won't feel
out of plays, but at the same time they can

(02:09:40):
do something drastically different that you don't feel like I'm
just playing extension of the first game. Yeah, and that
balance of keeping what is the same and adding things
that's fresh but not too much. They have been pretty
successful between the first and second game, and I really
want to see what they would do with the story one. Obviously,

(02:10:01):
the art's beautiful, the story's been just universally praised. I see,
and nothing can go wrong with this one.

Speaker 2 (02:10:10):
I would kind of like to see what the game.

Speaker 1 (02:10:13):
Play looks like, but that's probably similar. Well I think
we saw a little bit of it, but I think
it's basically similar.

Speaker 2 (02:10:22):
You're still piloting, still piloting a tank.

Speaker 1 (02:10:26):
Yeah, the tank, and you know, you probably go through
fight some battles, have some kind of like things in
the middle group of story and continue the story. How
I betrayed the World and man. And we have a
lot of viewers who are big fans of FUGA.

Speaker 2 (02:10:45):
Oh yeah, really, I know, yeah, I do remember. Okay,
FUGA is here and well it's not here yet, but
it will be on May nine, and it's coming.

Speaker 1 (02:10:57):
To so soon. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (02:11:01):
It's like uploding all modern platforms.

Speaker 1 (02:11:05):
That's crazy. That's crazy. Really, nf me, that's it. Yeah, wow,
I might treat myself. That's my graduation present.

Speaker 2 (02:11:14):
Yeah, the same ideas, Idea Factories, Shooter, Scar Lead, Salvation.
Big Day.

Speaker 1 (02:11:21):
Yeah, it's gonna be a big day.

Speaker 2 (02:11:23):
It's also the birthday, so you know, you know what
I'm getting her? Yeah, oh yeah, it's her birthday, so
I guess she's getting a couple of video games for.

Speaker 1 (02:11:33):
Well, lucky gal.

Speaker 2 (02:11:35):
I'm so thought.

Speaker 1 (02:11:37):
I want people to buy me games for my birthday. Guys,
people will watch it anyways.

Speaker 3 (02:11:44):
Uh up.

Speaker 1 (02:11:46):
Next, we have a game that we kind of touched
on last year. We talked briefly about it, but there
weren't a whole lot of information back then. But now
developer seven Quark had just given us a new trailer
and a lot more information on this. On this really
gorgeous looking game that I'm excited to share, and it's
called Yasha Legends of the Demon Blade.

Speaker 2 (02:12:11):
Showing up.

Speaker 1 (02:12:12):
Yes, mister Derek, Oh, just take a look at this
thing real quick. I mean, of course you have the
wife of your yes, of course, that's okay, of course,
But look at this. I love the hand drawn like
top down I do. And it's got that I don't know,
it's got like a like explain it, but like it's

(02:12:37):
got that sort of like a little bit of that
brush like water paint.

Speaker 2 (02:12:42):
Yeah, that sume kind of Japanese uh income painting.

Speaker 1 (02:12:47):
Yeah, it's not too much, but it's enough, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:12:52):
To be there to set the tongue mm hmm, kind
of like the watercolor backgrounds. I like the waves. They
almost look like a top down version of the finger waves,
you know. Yeah. Like it's definitely got that painterly aesthetic
that I really like.

Speaker 1 (02:13:09):
Yeah, and in the game, obviously it looks like it's
played it plays really well. So uh yeah, so definitely
a lot more information before just before they kind of
just showed like the character art a little bit and
then uh that was kind of it, and I was like, Okay,
I'll sure, we'll keep an eye on it. Well, now
they've got a lot more that they're showing this time.

(02:13:30):
Uh and and I'm gonna try to hype responsibly.

Speaker 2 (02:13:33):
Yeah that's cool.

Speaker 1 (02:13:36):
I mean this game plays well like and the story
is there like that's it, man, this this could be it.
This could be the next the next thing that's just
been enjoying a lot like shorter experience nowadays. And well, yeah,
this is gonna be one of those like shorter experiences
unless you suh at it. Yeah, well hopefully not get

(02:13:59):
me worst like tendonitis, because this is an action game.

Speaker 2 (02:14:03):
Yeah, can't play anymore because you have tendonitis or something,
you know, and just hands are just bound up.

Speaker 1 (02:14:10):
So this game is coming out on April twenty fourth
on PlayStation four or five, Xbox Series, Switch, and PC.
Just no Xbox One. I don't know why.

Speaker 2 (02:14:22):
And it doesn't have enough power, that's why.

Speaker 1 (02:14:25):
Yeah, that's probably it, all right.

Speaker 2 (02:14:30):
So next up The Life is Strange developer don't nod.
They've just announced a new little title called The Loneliness
I'm sorry, the Lonesome Guild, and it's going to be
an action RPG. The game follows ghost as Spirit with
no memories who, upon wakening, discovers that loneliness has spread

(02:14:54):
across the land, corrupting everything in its path. So, uh yeah,
Loneliness Brigade. Yeah, I'm sorry, Lonesome Brigade. I need to
I don't know why I could, but let's check it out. Yeah,
it's not brigade, it's a guild. What I did I say?
How many times did I say brigade? What is going

(02:15:18):
on in my head?

Speaker 1 (02:15:19):
You're still thinking about ulterium? Yeah, ship of course?

Speaker 2 (02:15:25):
Yeah, Maazi yeah yeah, Maazi. Still all right, let's check
it out.

Speaker 1 (02:15:34):
Yeah, so, boy, I did not expect uh uh, don't
nod the people who made life is strange to make
an action RPG of all things, not a card Yep.
It looks really nice too.

Speaker 2 (02:15:53):
It looks adorable. Yeah. So it's called the Lonesome Guild,
not the Lonely Brigade.

Speaker 1 (02:16:02):
I don't Oh, it's their alternative title. Yeah, the Lonesome
Gills Souls. Your assemble a team. It's gonna be like
a team of six character playable characters.

Speaker 2 (02:16:14):
Yeah, apparently I'm just making up words today. That looks
kind of neat.

Speaker 1 (02:16:25):
Yeah, I mean I don't really have doubts for people
who made like, you know, life is strange. So it's
a very credible studio. I just didn't excess a very
different style of game. Yeah, and doing really good because
this looks incredible.

Speaker 2 (02:16:47):
Maybe maybe after those games they just needed some sort
of palette cleanser.

Speaker 1 (02:16:52):
Oh jeez, even game develops the palate cleanser stuff they make.

Speaker 2 (02:16:56):
But I imagine that, I imagine. So, I mean, you've
worked with something enough it starts to you know, seep
into your bones.

Speaker 3 (02:17:04):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:17:05):
So yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (02:17:06):
Those the six characters in the back behind it goes
that playable characters.

Speaker 2 (02:17:11):
Yeah, and it's coming out in fall of this year
for PlayStation five, this Xbox series and pcv esteem.

Speaker 1 (02:17:21):
All right, are you ready for like one of the
biggest news in RPG?

Speaker 2 (02:17:26):
Do you know what RPG?

Speaker 3 (02:17:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:17:28):
I am, because I'm actually I already saw it. I'm
kind of I kind of dig it. Let's talk about it. Yeah,
all right.

Speaker 1 (02:17:35):
So Pokemon Presents happened on the twenty seventh of February,
and it gave us some insight into the new installment
of the Pokemon series called Pokemon Legends za uh. It
is a spinoff title that was announced early last year,
and I think early last year, it only gave us,
like the logo, they didn't really show anything like this

(02:17:58):
is not time will really seeing what kind of game
this is. Uh so let's let's take a look. Let's
take a look at what Pokemon Legends Z is all about.

Speaker 2 (02:18:07):
Yeah, yeah, last time they showed off this like, they
showed off so little about it. I forgot that it existed.
So like when this trailer dropped them like they're making
a new Legends game, and and it actually well I
would say it looks hype, but but let's be real.
It looks like a switch game, but like a switch

(02:18:33):
game made by game freaks specifically. But all of those
qualifiers aside, all of those qualifiers aside. I think that
the gameplay mechanics that they show off here, it looks
like a good iterative step forward from less starters. Who

(02:18:53):
you going with? Total me too?

Speaker 1 (02:18:58):
That's that's you know what, you know what's tough about this.
I don't like any of the three.

Speaker 2 (02:19:04):
I get that. I get that. So the reason that
Total Dial is the one that I am kind of
curious about playing again myself is because that was my
starter and was it gold? I want to say it
was Pokemon Gold when I played it on you know,
back in the day, So it might be like nice

(02:19:24):
little nostalgic choice, but yeah, I gotta say it does.
I also do feel like Gentu had the weakest starters,
but otherwise some some really good other pokemon we're introduced
during that point in the game.

Speaker 1 (02:19:45):
So yeah, I think I'm gonna have to go with
water this time too.

Speaker 2 (02:19:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:19:54):
Not a big fan of tur Pick. Not a big fan.

Speaker 2 (02:19:58):
Ye, I agree. I think total is the Uh, it's
the correct choice.

Speaker 1 (02:20:06):
He has crunch I like, I like, I like crunch.

Speaker 2 (02:20:09):
Oh yeah, and it turns into for Alligator, which is
pretty cool. Yes, I mean, and and that kind of
looks like a dragon of sorts, not not quite like
prehistoric animal. Yeah yeah, prehistoric lizard that you know has strong,

(02:20:29):
strong bites and stuff. Yeah, that's kind of up my alley,
but I did not. One of the things I didn't
like about for Alligator though, is how ugly it was
on Gold, like, especially like when it was like in
your in your front, you know, from the blurb. Yeah,
it's just like, oh, I can't even tell what this

(02:20:50):
pokemon is. But yeah, that's cool, are you now?

Speaker 3 (02:20:56):
Now?

Speaker 2 (02:20:56):
I think I'll have more to enjoy with.

Speaker 1 (02:20:59):
Yeah, they bring it back Mega Evolution. So Mega ivolusion
was gone in Sort and Scarlett Violet. Yeah, they're bringing
it back. Giganti Max, they bring it back Mega.

Speaker 3 (02:21:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:21:12):
I feel like Giganta Max was jumping in the shark
a little. They rule in it back in Oh they
didn't even show off part of the mechanics that I care.

Speaker 1 (02:21:21):
About, what the dodging and stuff. Yeah they did earlier.

Speaker 2 (02:21:26):
Oh, I was distracted. So yeah, one of the things
that they are doing that they are improving upon previous release.
And I don't know what this whole splash teaser thing is.
I have to assume it has to do with Yeah,
Pokemon Go. Maybe I don't know, but but one of
the things about that that's really nice is being able
to run and not just like I know that in Archaeus,

(02:21:48):
you the player could get splash damage with AOI stuff
and you could move out of the way, but the
Pokemon would just auto hit each other and like they
wouldn't dodge. But now your mom will run alongside you
and you can lead them out of dangerous areas of
effect and that's pretty cool. So that, yeah, brings us

(02:22:08):
one step.

Speaker 1 (02:22:08):
Closer and you dodge.

Speaker 2 (02:22:10):
Just that it wasn't yeah, I mean it's a chance dodge,
not any skill dodge exactly. And and that brings us
a little closer, that much closer to the anime style
battles that I envisioned from my youth.

Speaker 1 (02:22:23):
Oh that, you know what, You're right, it is cool.
I think about it like that. It's like, uh, that
is the Pokemon style, like the anime style of battle.

Speaker 2 (02:22:34):
That's what I've always wanted. Give me the anime style
Pokemon battle, uh, you know, and I'll be happy.

Speaker 1 (02:22:43):
Yes, I'm not a big fan about in this game.
It's like mostly the visuals because like Chas is just
so stunning. It was like a striking game. It's very
stylistic to me. I mean I mean not like not
like the character graphically yeah, graphically speaking, I mean, look

(02:23:03):
the Pokemon, I mean, what is it game freak can
only so they are on their own scale, its game freak.
It's I'm not expecting anything crazy before. If you compare
all the Pokemon like archaeis, it's just so the best.

Speaker 2 (02:23:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:23:22):
Yeah, And I was hoping that they would continue down
that path of having like Legends game be like well
not only experimental, but before also just a little whole
style very pretty. And what do we see so far?
It just kind of looks like Legends, slightly Legends in

(02:23:43):
a big town, yeah, but also like very still very
like Scarlet, Like well, here's the other thing, like, uh,
other thing about that is we're also looking at the
switch version of the game. And you know that there's
gonna be a switch to version of the game, right
at least I think that's the kopium that we're all

(02:24:04):
sharing right now. Is that like, yeah, it might look
like but but maybe it will look like a Shinier
but on switch to and that and that might be different.
And Pokemon fans like Shiny, I know, they grind for
Shiny's so man that I just feel like they need

(02:24:25):
to work on the aesthetics just a little bit, because
right now, nothing about that game really stands out to
me esthetically speaking. It's it's all just like it's a town.

Speaker 2 (02:24:35):
Yea. The setting does look kind of neat, like it's
you know, based on you know, Paris Ish and and
some of the you know, less like touristy aspects of Paris,
I think, and I think it looks pretty good like
from like a inspirational perspective, but not on an implementation perspective.

Speaker 1 (02:24:55):
Yeah, we'll see what they did.

Speaker 2 (02:24:58):
You imagine a crossover like a Pokemon Legends made in
tandem with Monolithsoft. Oh geez, Like that's that's what we
should be getting here. Like, let's be real, this is
the highest grossing franchise in the world. There's no reason
that we're seeing.

Speaker 1 (02:25:17):
This Pokemon by Zeno play that would be so good
Traumatic stories. Please, I want traumatic Pokemon.

Speaker 2 (02:25:27):
H Oh wait, that's.

Speaker 1 (02:25:30):
So so. This game is coming out late twenty twenty
five and only on the Switch and the Switch to
of course, but they haven't announced that yet, but you
bet it's going to be on the Switch too if
it comes out before then, Yeah, you're gonna leave the
absolutely best one for you sort of ticket away this one.

(02:25:52):
This one got me geeking when I saw it.

Speaker 2 (02:25:55):
You know, I actually don't have any personal like connection
to this for franchise. Really really, I've never I never
I was always teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I've I've heard
of this, but I've legitimately never seen a piece of
this media before. So maybe it would be better coming
from your mouth. I don't know what do you think?

Speaker 1 (02:26:17):
Let's I'll do it? Oh so Dutch a Dutch developer.
Dutch developer Blast zero announced that they will be making
a brand new two D action RPG based on the
nineties anime Samurai Pizza Cat. Like, just just saying it

(02:26:39):
out loud is crazy to me, I know. Dutch developer
has decided in twenty twenty five that they will make
a two D action RPG based on Samurai Pizza Cat.
Of all franchise that they can pick to ip, they
picked Samurai Pizza Cat.

Speaker 2 (02:26:55):
Why not? You know what?

Speaker 3 (02:26:57):
Why not?

Speaker 1 (02:26:57):
Indeed, let's take a look at that trailer, because I like,
this was the trailer that was most excited about.

Speaker 3 (02:27:05):
A video game. Video game thirty years later and these
old measure balls are getting a new video game you're playing.

Speaker 1 (02:27:13):
That's actually this.

Speaker 2 (02:27:16):
I was gonna say, this looks incredible.

Speaker 1 (02:27:21):
I think they're going to reuse some clips and stuff
to make it like retrofitted.

Speaker 2 (02:27:25):
I was gonna say this looks authentic because it is.

Speaker 1 (02:27:28):
Huh, because it is. I'm probably not payble. Wait do
you see the actual game too?

Speaker 2 (02:27:37):
I feel like I'm going to get copyright striked for this.

Speaker 1 (02:27:40):
You shouldn't. These are all like dialogues for the game.

Speaker 2 (02:27:45):
I know, but they are all re used clips from
a video game or from a from a TV shoot.
So so I don't know. We'll see fair use maybe.
I don't know. Are they going to show off any
gameplay here? I hope that they are, yes.

Speaker 1 (02:27:59):
Coming, Oh this is this is kind of like the introduction,
and then they will show you the gameplay.

Speaker 2 (02:28:07):
When the game gets you know, busy cat there you go.

Speaker 1 (02:28:17):
Look at this.

Speaker 2 (02:28:23):
This looks so ridiculous. I love it, though, Oh man,
this is gonna be Is this gonna be like a
little gun By kind of?

Speaker 1 (02:28:34):
I think so game, I think so, Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (02:28:38):
Could you imagine if Konami actually did a gun By?
You know, I would be so happy.

Speaker 1 (02:28:46):
Now that that the present day Konami all bets off.
They can they can do all kinds of crazy things,
or they can revert back to their NFT pinball pinball.

Speaker 2 (02:28:56):
So we'll see. Yeah, I see what happens.

Speaker 1 (02:28:59):
But boy, that ooh that was the dangers. This is
bad for my health. I saw the trailer. I thought
it was like, is it April already? Like I thought
they were kidding. I'm like who's what Samurai Pizza Cat.
This game is called Samurai Pizza Cats Blast from the Past.

(02:29:21):
It is gonna be out sometimes in twenty twenty six
on all major platforms, hopefully the switch to as well.
Uh but yeah, just it's grinning like this ear to
ear man, like this thing is crazy and it's not
even just like they're just banking on your nostalgia. Like
the game genuinely looks really good in the art just now,

(02:29:44):
and they show you actual gameplay and it looks good.
So I can't wait to see what they what the
final product actually looks like. I'm so excited.

Speaker 3 (02:29:52):
What this all?

Speaker 1 (02:29:54):
Right? Yes, so we've got one final piece of news
before we move on to super chats and all that
fun stuff, and that is industry news. Grant x will
host the Near Series fifteenth anniversary live stream on April
nineteenth at four am in Eastern time, because this is

(02:30:15):
meant for Japan, but you can always watch the vod
I guess afterwards. Well, the broadcast itself will include some
of the latest events merchandise celebrating this series anniversary, and
also a mini concert and if there's anything you need
to know about the Near Series, the music is top notch,

(02:30:37):
top notch. I've gone to like two of their concerts already,
and boy, it is an experience. So we're going to
include the YouTube link in the description so that you
can click on it on a later date so you
don't have to spend too much time trying to find it.
You can book market, do whatever you need. But it's

(02:30:58):
going to be able nineteenth at four am Eastern time,
and that's three am Central time, so I don't know.
I guess if you can't sleep, you can always click
into it and try to watch the concert.

Speaker 2 (02:31:12):
Or maybe just catch the highlights. The next day.

Speaker 1 (02:31:15):
I'm hoping that they announced like some kind of new
like Near game, because you know, Yo Guitar has been
very cryptic about working on a new game. I would
love to see a new new game. I will I
will freak out if they make a new Near game.

Speaker 2 (02:31:32):
You're just gonna shadow drop a new year three huh yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:31:35):
Just stop. Well, I mean it's the fifteenth anniversary of
the you know, celebrations, so it's not like a bad
time to announce something like this. We never know, we
never know, and I'm still trying to get there to
play Near Tawana so that I'll get there some day.

Speaker 2 (02:31:51):
Once everybody can agree on what game I should play next,
I'll do.

Speaker 1 (02:31:54):
It dang or finish, you know, Sign and Hill two.

Speaker 2 (02:32:01):
You know, think of.

Speaker 1 (02:32:04):
We we we're we're well pasted. Eight hundred followers, man,
that's crazy. We're well on our way.

Speaker 2 (02:32:11):
We are two hundred subscribers away from a second stream
of of Silent Hill two Hill to love it, love
it it is.

Speaker 1 (02:32:24):
But how do you feel having played it? I haven't
even honestly, I kind of like it. Yeah, I actually
like it quite a bit. But that's the new Konami
for you, man. That's that's part of the package.

Speaker 2 (02:32:36):
That's right. They did do that too, weird.

Speaker 1 (02:32:40):
Uh on on a separate piece of news, and I
was going to bring that up. I forgot, But now
that we somehow cycle back to it, I was going
to say, on the new Konami front, there is a tiny,
tiny industry news. Because Son and Hill two did so well,
Konami has announced, in conjunction with Blooper uh that they

(02:33:01):
are going to pursue new games. Uh yeah, So I
am excited to see what else Konami is going to
cook with them. Nice damn announce that They're like, yeah,
we did so well that we're gonna do something else.
So but that's something else you don't know. But it's awesome, dude,
Konami man, this is this is the new Konami. They're like, hey,

(02:33:23):
let's try to repeat our success, you know, let's see
if we can do something.

Speaker 2 (02:33:27):
I dig it, I dig it. Therefore, yeah, all right,
so before we wind out, we do have some some
questions to respond to from super Chat. Well maybe not
necessarily questions, but some some chats that did come in
from super Chats, uh, some of which were actually just
a couple of stickers from uh Anthony much appreciated, you know.

(02:33:49):
And one of those was, you know, a cute looking
fox uh, and they said that they wanted to play
this game, right meo, and uh, you know, I appreciate
that pun. Next up from Eagle Knight, they threw out here,
I just pledged for the Collector's edition, talking about Ulterium Shift,

(02:34:09):
and they love the fact that they're offering a collector's
edition and they say they totally support it, looking forward
to the finished product, and so am I.

Speaker 1 (02:34:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:34:19):
And then another one here from Anthony H who says
epic comeback, Konami, let's go. We are back baby.

Speaker 1 (02:34:28):
Oh my god. So that yes, not in my Bengo
cards like I did not expect, dude, it's just like
bounce back.

Speaker 2 (02:34:36):
I remember a hashtag trending constantly about ten years ago
when I was starting my YouTube channel, and one of
those well I don't even really need to say what
it was, but I'll just say it started with f
and ended with Konami and it was just always like
trending because of some bad practices not that long ago.

(02:34:58):
So I'm glad to see that things are turning around
and yeah, let's let's go.

Speaker 1 (02:35:04):
Maybe they clean house and get a proper reset. We
knew what they did, but whatever they did, man, it's
it's kind of working.

Speaker 2 (02:35:13):
Yeah, we'll see if it's a fluke. Yeah, I don't know.
Once is a fluke, twice as a uh twice might
be a coincidence, free as a pattern, So I uh
so moving along. We also have some super or not
on us. I mean they were super messages, but they
they were just messages from the last episode in the

(02:35:35):
comment section here that we pulled through.

Speaker 1 (02:35:37):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (02:35:38):
And one of them here is from Shadow King nineteen
eighty two. Says, I won't give a PC game a
chance for the most part because I still hate uh
because I hate to sit at my desk. And I
get that. And I think that that's personally one reason
that the Steam Deck has just kind of blown up

(02:35:58):
so much the way that it has over these years,
because it has essentially turned a huge library of of
decent games, quality games, top tier games, uh, and it's
put them all onto the well. I would call it
a handheld factor, and it is technically handheld, but it
is much bigger than like a switch. It's it's it's

(02:36:21):
like it's like someone saw the the meme of like
the Duke Controller from Xbox Original and they're like, bet.

Speaker 1 (02:36:33):
That is description.

Speaker 2 (02:36:37):
You know it's you know if you it. Yeah, So
it's it's basically the Duke controller version of a game
gear that can happen to play a whole freaking load
of PC games. Now. I do think that if Valve
really wanted to capitalize on us console gamers uh and

(02:36:58):
and I think they should, they should make a console
version of the Steam Deck just sam exact internal hardware.
Just set it, uh, you know, just take off the screen,
take off the controller, pair it with a controller maybe,
or you could just use your own console controller maybe
and sync it up but then just have an HGMI

(02:37:19):
output port, plug it into a TV, make it a console,
like there's there's no reason not to. And there's a
whole lot of console gamers out there, just like shadow King.

Speaker 1 (02:37:31):
Who And it allows you to link to Steam log
in and your entire library is downloadabowl on your console machine.
Oh my god, that would be amazing. Yeah, I would
buy that, actually.

Speaker 2 (02:37:48):
Yeah, it would be so good and and of course
it could also probably for PC gamers, would be a
great endpoint for like just streaming your local PC games
to your console. Like it'd just be so easy to
kind of fill in that that niche there, but they
haven't done that yet and uh and that makes me sad.

Speaker 1 (02:38:07):
Yeah, And if anyone wants to ask, why don't you
just build like a you know, like one of those
PCs called again h HDPC, like an HTPC.

Speaker 2 (02:38:16):
Those things aren't even like invoguing or there are some
things you can do.

Speaker 1 (02:38:21):
But yeah, like why don't you just build something like
an HTPC where you instead of a home theater, it
would just be like a tiny uh you know, uh
console replacement, right, Steam do that Steam goes.

Speaker 2 (02:38:35):
A long way to make and and getting things that
are Deck compatible like that's that's a huge quality of
life improvement that some people just don't have to worry
about whether it's gonna work or not, or compatibility issues.
There's so many reasons that having a Steam machine so
to speak, would be, you know, a game changer for

(02:38:59):
a lot of people.

Speaker 1 (02:39:00):
Absolutely, it's it's it's the same reason why consoles do exist.

Speaker 2 (02:39:06):
Period. It is the reason consoles exist, and it's the
reason steam Deck is doing so well. It's not just
because it's a small computer. Because ia Neo has been
doing those four ages and oh gosh, who's who's the
maker of the of the small like palm tops that
had controllers built into those ah, I can't remember their

(02:39:31):
name anymore, but they've been making them for ages and
they were super boutique and relatively underpowered, but like they
could play PC games in your hand, and and it
wasn't enough to make it big until steam Deck made
something that worked with the infrastructure.

Speaker 3 (02:39:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:39:48):
Absolutely, it's a package. You can't you can't just do
like one or two things. You have to do like
all of it, and all of it well and Steam
got it.

Speaker 2 (02:39:57):
Surprise, So next up? Uh Roosevelt with some numbers said,
it's a judgment cut and reference from Devil May Cry,
not Omni Slash back you geez, you play a lot
of action games and hack and slash games. You uh,
you see a lot of games reference Devil May Cry
and other action games like Stellar Blade. Uh, I had

(02:40:20):
a couple two you we I messed up there would everything.
Everything is just only slash to me, I'm sorry I
did ever hurty you baku that d MC was just
a reference to Omni Slash with guns.

Speaker 1 (02:40:36):
Oh no, oh, now you're really going to piss off
a bunch of CATCN fans. So oh your about to
get canceled. You're going to go on an apology tour. No,
but but thank you for letting us know. Like I
have never played the Devil May Cry series. I've seen
people play the Devil Cry series, but I haven't personally
played it. But yeah, no, I I I appreciate it.

(02:40:59):
So if you as got some factory, don't be a freighter.
So yeah, I love I love reading them.

Speaker 2 (02:41:05):
Yeah, fire Breather says, I just watched the Tides of
Annihilation gameplay trailer. This game looks so awesome, they say.
I'm not really into souls likes, but I love character
action games like Devil May Cry and we need more
of those, hm, they say. I also, uh can't wait
for god shared chronicles with my most anticipated indies for sure.

(02:41:29):
Thank you guys so much for the great interview. Well
you're welcome, always happy to interview awesome indies and uh
and even and even.

Speaker 1 (02:41:39):
Dratzy games and even dratzy games. I mean, I like,
I like drafts. I don't know about that Maazi guy though.
You know, no, they were great, and they were they
were so awesome to come on here and they were
so flexible. So yeah, but no, just appreciate them rescheduling
like last minute. We just reached out yesterday, said hey,

(02:42:00):
would you guys be out of his last minute? But
can you can you come by? And they're like, yeah, sure, man,
we'll make time.

Speaker 2 (02:42:05):
And then hanging on for like an entire like forty
five minutes later than we told them.

Speaker 1 (02:42:10):
Oh yeah, oh geez, oh yeah, we're never getting dumb
back on again. They're never They're never coming back. They're like, yeah, no,
no thanks, I remember what happened last time. So but hey,
that does it about does it?

Speaker 2 (02:42:25):
For tonight's show? I hate to wrap things up so quickly,
but I also have some little pupper out there I
need to start helping out with. And if you enjoyed
today's show, I hope you did. If you did, be
sure to follow the link in the description to support
Dratzy Games on their Kickstarter or wish list them over
on Steam. Also, be sure to give us a thumbs

(02:42:45):
up if you liked it, because hey, that really does help,
and so do comments. Comments is like Hobbits's comments down
below are also super cool. And whatever platform you listen on,
you know, whether that be Spotify or Apple pop Casts
or whatever, it's always nice to get positive feedback. So
thank you again, everybody, have a great restud voicemail don't

(02:43:08):
have any voicemails. Oh you could leave us a voicemail
though if you wanted to. Yeah, you could leave us one.
That's here. Let me let me pull up the number
here just so people can see it. Not that I
forgot what our our number was, but I just want
to make sure I don't accidentally say a different number.
You can read us at seventy eight five three three

(02:43:30):
seven thirty eight oh five, or you could leave us
a file over at hit point at superdrekarpgs dot com
and uh yeah we'll we'll play it on air and
respond to it. But until then, guys, baku. Any final
thoughts for the people.

Speaker 1 (02:43:50):
No, not really, I'm just I'm just still thinking about Alter.

Speaker 2 (02:43:54):
I'm all right. Yep. That's that of good night, everybody.

Speaker 3 (02:43:59):
Goodbye, say se

Speaker 4 (02:45:01):
Term this say heveran

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