Jake: Werewolves, oil rigs and bags of milk. Two of these are part of. Two of these are part of horror games. The third one isn't. Which one isn't? Well, you're gonna have to listen to find out. Hidden Gems Today on welcome everybody to another episode of Press me to cancel your favorite Bagged Milk Focus podcast. And we're so Bagged Milk focused. Just wait till I talk about my game. But no, we're talking about some games that you've probably never heard of because I know I certainly didn't when I heard what these guys are bringing to the table. These are games that you need to not miss. These are games you need to play for 2025. These are games that came out, I believe your guys games came out in 2024 last year and mine came out on the switch a couple years ago. So these are fairly recent games that I have not heard anything about. So these are hidden gems. They're games worth playing for very different reasons. And talk to me this week about their picks. We got Wolf. How are you doing this week?
Wulff: I am doing all right, like I said. Just before we started I picked up blueprints so I will be playing that later or sometime this weekend.
Jake: I tripped myself up at the start of the show because I realized what game I picked. It is not blueprints, sadly.
Chard: Delete all the videos.
Jake: I tell you, we'll start over. I'll tell you who is a prince though. Chart, how you doing this week?
Chard: Wow, nice transition. I'm. I'm doing all right. It is, it's Friday. I. You know how much I love Fridays. We got a three day weekend coming up after this week, so I'm excited for the short week next week. And then I am, guys, I'm staring down the barrel of clear, obscure Expedition 33 in two weeks and goodbye life guaranteed.
Jake: Yeah, that game's got a lot of style. It looks like. It looks like a good solid jrpg. So I'm hoping you like that one. I know that depending on if you like it or not, we're going to do an episode on that one as well to talk about it. That looks pretty.
Chard: Do an episode whether I like it or not because it's got some. It's got so much polish already to it that it will be an episode of why does this look so good and it's so bad or it's everything I wanted it to be. So there's no way we can't avoid talking about it.
Jake: No, I think it's gonna be a good one though. We're a retro game podcast. Can't you tell as we're talking about, you know, clar obscura blueprints and, and then the other game I won't, I won't spoil, but I know the game that Wolf sister want to talk about is also not retro.
Chard: I'm gonna pitch, I'm gonna pitch this. Hold on, I'm gonna spin this Clear obscure expedition is considered retro only because it takes us back to a turn based style of RPGs that we have not seen in a long time. And it is very much on the vein of Legend of Dragoon, Mario RPG and a lot of those kinds of sets ups. So if anything it will be a retro inspired game because we will be talking about the retro rules that it follows back in the previous less action RPG world that we live in now. I'm looking at you Final Fantasy maybe.
Jake: I don't know if the retro community will give us a pass in that one, but we'll talk about it anyway. But that's okay. Look, no tangents. We've already had like 10 minutes of talking before we got to the episode so we're gonna get right into it. We have three games that I want to talk about. I'm pretty excited to hear your guys games. So who do. I got pulled up, I got wolf. I got your game pulled up first. How about you tell us about your pick? First off, tell us how much it costs because I think this is great, this game.
Wulff: Okay, I'm coming to the table with something everybody should and can play for free.
Jake: I like free.
Wulff: It is available on Steam, it's available on Epic, it's available on Android and it's available on iOS. So there is no excuse to not just download this and give it a shot. That said, this is a game called the Were Cleaner. So mine is the one with werewolves. Mine is not the horror game.
Jake: There you go. How could a game but worlds not be scary? Everybody's asking.
Wulff: It's so stupidly cute. It's ridiculous. Like it's so cute that they made plushies for it.
Jake: Oh really? Okay.
Chard: Yeah, Charles has a plushie too. I don't know how cute that so is.
Jake: Balatro. He's pretty. That clown's pretty scary Scary.
Chard: So he can be.
Wulff: Yes. So essentially you are playing as a janitor and you know your first day Monday, you go in, you play as a janitor. You're just going about your day at work that night you get an email. The whole company has to work unpaid overtime at night or else they don't get paid. And the main character, Kyle, his rent's due in a week. He's got to get paid.
Chard: Right?
Wulff: So we can all relate, right?
Chard: Yeah.
Jake: Unpaid overtime is kind of scary, though, so I still think it's a horror game.
Wulff: The downside is he's a werewolf, so now that he's got to go in and after hours, he can't be seen by his co workers, so he does not want to be caught as a werewolf. Otherwise, the jig's up, right?
Chard: Yes.
Wulff: So you gotta. It's. It's kind of stealth, but not ridiculously stealth, because everything is telegraphed. Like, when people are busy, they don't really pay attention to you. You can tell what direction they're all looking in. There's. There's range of vision is really narrow. Where'd I go? Why did it switch to my obs camera?
Jake: Did you turn into a werewolf? Wolf. Wolf.
Chard: Are you. Is it a full noon? I thought we were gibbous waxing. What are we talking about?
Wulff: Weird. How do I. Yeah. Why did it swap itself? That shouldn't have happened.
Jake: All right, do you lose the virtual camera? There it is.
Wulff: No, it just. It changed. It swapped itself. That was really bizarre.
Chard: Listen, we all know that you are actually a werewolf, and you're just trying to clean your room, and you. You don't want us to catch you in there.
Wulff: It's not dark out yet. We're safe.
Chard: It's never dark up here.
Wulff: This game, you essentially are wandering, cleaning up the messes. It tells you how many messes you got to clean up. As you progress through the game, you get more tools in your arsenal. You start with literally just like a pressure washer. It's not super pressure. It looks more like just waving a hose at things with the water just drooping over it. But you wash the messes away, and then you leave. So that's how it starts. Eventually, you start seeing things that you have to vacuum up, so you have to swap back and forth. Then you get a tool to where you can shoot trash out of, like, a piece of trash out of your vacuum, and it'll distract the nearest person to have to go pick it up.
Jake: Okay.
Wulff: So you can send them away from you, and then they'll take it. The nearest wastebasket, if you're sneaky enough. You can also just vacuum it out of their hands by the end of the game. You also have a bag you can just throw over people's heads. And then they're like, oh, no, what's happening? And they don't like you do.
Jake: Yeah.
Wulff: So you get your tools at your disposal, which you need because by the end of the game, it is actually really intense. Especially if you want to five star things. And no, not kill your co workers, because you can do that.
Jake: Oh.
Wulff: And by you can do that, I mean if anybody sees you, he will eat them because he does not want witnesses. So. And if you don't dispose of the body, other people could come across it. Now you have to dispose of those witnesses too. So you're literally hitman.
Jake: Yeah.
Wulff: You're literally stricken with, you know, clean up the mess because you have to eat the body and then you have to clean up the mess.
Chard: All right.
Wulff: And if there's a witness, it says kill and eat the witness, then clean up the mess. So you're making more work for yourself as well.
Chard: That's intense. Are you sure this isn't the scary one?
Jake: Yeah.
Wulff: And the security guard who is supposedly you're on friendly terms with the guy throughout the week, he is slowly losing it because he's discovering weird hairs that he had analyzed and they're not animal that any known animal and they're not human. So he's like losing his mind by the end of the day. The game, he does catch on that Kyle is a werewolf. And I will not spoil the last stage. But it is, it is interesting. But yeah, like it's. It's really cute. It's really fun. It can be a little stressful, but honestly, I got all five stars and found all the collectibles and got no kill stickers on every stage in about three hours, I think.
Jake: Okay. Good size, especially for free. I saw this is made by students, I think is what I saw on their website. They're all students.
Wulff: Yes. So this was made by students at usc, which is actually really well known for its game development program. So like they've. They actually have a ton of free games on Steam and then one paid from 2017 for some reason, but the rest of them are free and there's a bunch that look pretty decent. This game at this point might kind of fall into the Final Fantasy Tactics hidden gem like GP pulled on us a couple years ago because it has had over a million downloads, I guess, across all.
Jake: Oh, really?
Wulff: Yeah, I learned.
Jake: Was this in. Was this in Steam Next Fest?
Wulff: I don't think so. I don't know.
Jake: Okay. So I know you mentioned this.
Wulff: I didn't know this game existed until about two months ago.
Jake: Okay.
Chard: Yeah, this game looks really good for students.
Wulff: Yeah, it came out last May. It Literally, just like in the last month won the audience award at igf. So.
Jake: Wow.
Wulff: It is known to some degree, but you guys hadn't heard of it. I hadn't heard of it. So I was like, this is a game that needs some love. Even if, you know, we're only going to add a handful more people to the people who have checked it out, it's worth checking out.
Jake: I mean, excuse me, sir, but Balatro just won the BAFTA for best game of the year, and I think that's because of press B, given that Balatro bump. We love you.
Chard: I believe that 100%.
Jake: So, you know, we do magical things with our. With our audience.
Wulff: This game also tells a second story at the same time. So there's the story of Kyle and Daryl and the whole werewolf thing and just trying to get his paycheck at the end of the week. And then there's the story of how the entire company is starting and executing a rebellion against the company and CEO because they have to work on paid overtime at night. And so the messes you have to clean up start to revolve around that.
Chard: Oh, okay.
Wulff: You're finding, like, leftovers from meetups that are rebellions and say, screw Alan Hugs, which is supposedly the corporation. It's also the development company for the game. So.
Chard: Nice.
Jake: That's pretty good.
Chard: That's funny. And.
Wulff: And by the end. Oh, it goes off the rails with, like, you find an altar and you find other things that are like, whoa. This company really went off the rails this week. It's. The B plot is there being told by the messes you clean up. And they're wonderful.
Jake: Okay. Yeah.
Chard: I like. I like a story within a story. That sounds good.
Jake: Yeah, that sounds fun.
Wulff: Yeah.
Jake: I dig the artwork in this a lot. The intro to the game. The intro video animation is pretty cute. The graphics and sprite work is really well done. Looks like a good ride. It messes you're cleaning up. It's not the same puddles or something.
Wulff: Yeah, you start interesting cleaning up messes from, like, you start actually having to catch animals, net them and stuff throughout the week.
Chard: What is vile mold infestation. I love it.
Wulff: Yeah, there's. There's a projectile diarrhea mess you have to clean up on day one or two.
Jake: I already have three kids, but I am more of an expert on projectile diarrhea and vomit than you can imagine. This is. I'd be great. This game.
Chard: This might hit too close to home.
Jake: Jake. Yeah. Am I a werewolf? How many?
Wulff: Literally six or seven. It's just the week. But I mean the way this game looks and plays, I feel like this could have been a full fledged like, you know, month long worth of levels for GameCube or something like that's. It looks like a GameCube game. It plays kind of like a GameCube game. Like this could have been a full fledged game if it were longer. But I know it's just like a student project and then it got released and I mean the success it's had just from that is amazing.
Chard: You just cleaned up a bloody forklift crash.
Wulff: Yeah.
Jake: Are we sure this is not the horror game of the three?
Chard: I'm still wondering.
Jake: It might be.
Chard: Horror game or not.
Jake: That's pretty good.
Chard: Wow.
Jake: No, this is a great pick. This is one I wanted to try. And it's. It's hard to argue with free. But also like the graphic style is really great. It reminds me kind of it's not a little bit like overcooked. Right where I look at overcooked and that could have been this in terms of like a great core concept, but overcooked through thousands of hundreds of levels at you. I kind of wonder why they didn't expand on this a bit more or if we'll see a sequel that's more of a full fledged game. But this is great. This looks awesome. And again, I had never even heard of this. And like I usually hear about the cool gems like this, but I. I didn't hear nothing. So it's interesting. I got a million downloads.
Wulff: Yeah, this is.
Jake: This is cool. Neat. This will. This will.
Chard: This will be fun on the Steam deck.
Wulff: Oh yeah. Like I played it. I played through it on the Steam deck and it played perfectly. Today I played it with the mouse and keyboard to get the footage. I don't think you used the footage I sent you, but didn't I? Nope.
Jake: Sorry, Wolf.
Wulff: That's all right.
Chard: Wow.
Jake: No, because I don't quit the other guy.
Wulff: But yeah, that was. It plays really well with a mouse and keyboard. Plays really well with a controller. I played through it on the Steam deck initially. So nice. It's fun. And apparently you can play it on iOS and Android so there must be some sort of screen controls that it has on those. So I wonder how they modify those.
Jake: Do you know if they made it in Unity or something?
Wulff: I don't know what they made it in, but given it's a student project, probably unreal. Or Unity would be my guess.
Jake: Just the multi platform right at the get go is pretty interesting, especially for a free game. Because just to deploy across everything is great. I see. I put your link in my notepad, not in the browser, so good job. Me. These guys have done other games like you mentioned, or just the school has released other games. I'm trying to think of this team has done anything else.
Wulff: I think it was just the school releases the student projects. I don't think this team has done anything else.
Jake: Because whenever you see a student project like this, it's always like. I always like to see the names of the people who worked on it because then you keep tabs on that person to see what they do in the future. I love following people on social media just to see what they end up doing in the future because you never know what kind of crazy stuff people are going to do. There's a few folks like that where I'm just like, I loved your demo. I loved your experimental game. You did. I'm just. I want to see what you do in the future. Whether you enter mainstream, mainstream gaming or you do continue to do awesome indie stuff. It's always great. That's pretty cool. That's a red one. That's the We Cleaner on Steam and. Well, Steam and iOS and Android and everything. That's awesome. All right, Char, do you want to go next?
Chard: Sure. We can do mine now. Again, I am. This was a hidden gem when we decided to talk about this. However, just recently, my game has won three BAFTA awards.
Jake: We're doing really good at this, guys.
Chard: Yeah, well, there was a hidden gem and then they won a bunch of stuff. Let's say they won. I can't believe they won for voice acting. I know that one. And they won. Where the heck is it? New intellectual property is what they won. They won the award for.
Jake: I could have picked this. A fantasy critic.
Chard: And then two of the. Two of the. Two of the main. The voice actress and actor. Got one voice actor for that.
Jake: So.
Chard: So that's pretty cool. Anyways, my game is called Still Wakes the Deep. This is. This is a. A horror game. A horror story game. Basically. It. It takes place on an oil rig in the middle of. I believe it's the North Sea. It's somewhere out by Scotland island in England, in that area. And it's 1975, and you wake up on an oil rig where you work, and It's Christmas Day, 1975. You have a letter from your wife, who's very upset that you have run away from home to go work at this oil rig. You don't know why he's run away, but she's threatening separation and that the kids miss him and this, that the other. And he needs to take care of whatever problem this is and then come back when he's done. And if he doesn't. So you're kind of left guessing what. What's going on with this guy? Well, we'll come to find out that he got into a fight at a bar and put somebody in a hospital and he ran from the cops because his friend took him to an oil rig to avoid the cops to kind of have everything blow over. While he's on this oil rig, all hell breaks loose. Basically your first day on the rig, you get fired and you are leaving to get on a helicopter to leave the rig. And everything goes to the rig breaks down. And now the beginning of this game is basically talking about how the rig's falling apart, how they just started drilling and it's just a giant mess. And there's all the safety stuff's got problems. Huge, huge issues. When you're talking to your boss, the he gets a phone call when you're, you know, getting let go in the nicest way possible, that there's something wrong with the drill, that they've hit a gas pocket or there's a problem and the guy just says, push through it. Send it. Like they, like we do in manufacturing. Just send it. Just send it. I don't care what's wrong with it. Send it. And then you go outside and see this giant fleshy rainbow fin has basically entangled itself around the bottom of the drill through the entirety of the rig. And everybody's acting freaking crazy except for like one or two people that you managed to run into that are also trying to survive. The whole idea of this game is to get yourself off of this rig. You're just trying to survive. You don't know what's going on. People are mutating, there's weird creatures running around the ship. There's no weapons in this game, so there's nothing to defend yourself with. It is near, okay? Merely a sneak around and hide.
Jake: So it's not like Resident Evil or Silent Hill at all then. Like, I thought it was one of those.
Chard: Very much no experience. It's very much like alien isolation and the, and the concept of hiding, ducking. You can distract things. You could throw wrenches and hammers and buckets and stuff to distract them, to pull the creature away from where you're at and then proceed. But this game is, it's. It's relatively easy. But this game had me as stressed out as When I was playing Alien isolation. It is. And beautiful. This game is incredibly animated. It's done by, I believe Chinese Room is the group that did it. They've done. Yeah, they do a lot of like short stint kind of games. They've done. They did an amnesia. Yeah, they did Dear Esther. They did amnesia. An amnesia game. I think it's called. Machine for Pigs is that version and a bunch of stuff. So it's very much on par with. It's a story that they're telling. And you're just trying to get from point A to point B, about five hours long to play the entire thing. It is about $35. But I'll tell you what, I enjoyed pretty much every instance that I played in this game. This game had me very much stressed out playing throughout the whole thing. And you can, if you. If you were to listen to the videos that Jake is playing right now, you can actually hear me panicking to try to get from point A to point B because it's. They.
Jake: The.
Chard: The environment that they develop around the character is very stressful. There's a whole scene where you have to go into the legs of the oil rig. Now remember, you're in the middle of the ocean out in the middle of freaking nowhere, and there's water filling up in the legs and you have to release the pontoons to keep the rig from tipping over and basically sinking. You have to swim underwater in black oil water with a headlamp that maybe you see a foot in front of you. If you guys have whatever phobia that is of open waters. I can't remember what it is. Sinister would be here. You tell me what it is. This game will screw you up. It's. It's about a thousand times worse than Subnautica. It's just. Instead of being the entire game like Subnautica is, it's about 15 minutes tops of just stressing about being in water. The creatures are extremely well designed and are quite horrifying and very loud. They've got tendrils and.
Jake: Is it like one creature chasing you through the entire rig or is it just the whole environment is against you?
Chard: The whole environment, basically whatever. Whatever you have awoken in the water is turning everything against you on the rig. So there's more than one thing running around there. It's. It's. The people you work with have been mutated into this thing because they come in contact with what. Whatever it is. This is really cool film that. Every time you get close to one of the pieces of the creature or Entity or whatever. It does like a. Almost like a burning film look, like on the corner or the edges of the screen.
Jake: Okay.
Chard: Like, wherever it's close to location. So there are points where you're hiding underneath something and one of those things is walking around, and you can track it by the filter moving around your screen. Wherever it's walking, it's really cool. Like, it's a really cool design on how they do it. But everything about this game is terrifying. It's dark, it's scary, it's moody. The sounding and is it.
Jake: The.
Chard: The voice acting is. The voice acting is incredible. Now it's all, like Scottish. It's Gaelic for the most part.
Jake: Okay.
Chard: And. But the subtitles are in English, so. So, so when they say something in their slang, it's translated into what we would hear in English terms. And it's. I was laughing at it because I was like, what the hell did he say? Oh, it's right there. Okay, I read it. That's what he said. So. But it's. There's. There's not, like a lot of hidden spots on here. Here's the part I was stressing out about. There's not a lot of parts to, like, miss. There's not like, missable collectibles or anything crazy like that. It is really just a straightforward story. But, man, this thing had me on the edge of my seat on more than one occasion, to a point to. I did an hour snippet of each playthrough I was playing that. I was happy that that hour was over. So I can go take a walk because this game had my heart pumping like it. It was pretty crazy.
Jake: That's what you want in a video game. You want a heart attack. That's. That's what you want.
Chard: Really had my anxiety up, and I haven't felt that way since, like, alien isolation. Like, I hadn't felt that kind of stress in a while. So it's. It's really well done.
Jake: I. I tell you what I like. I do like the atmosphere the way you're describing it. And for folks watching the video, the graphics are great. I. I saw earlier in the clip the. The water hitting the. The pane of the glass in the window, that looked really great. The underwater effect is definitely terrifying. I hate being in an ocean water to begin with, but to be in a black water. This is the part.
Chard: Oh, this is the part. If you. For those watching the video, this is the swimming underneath in the black, inky water part that I was like, I'm not doing this I'm not turning the game off. I can't do this. I can't go in there.
Jake: What I like is the setup of the atmosphere is interesting to me because this is the same studio that not too long ago I got announced that they are taking over development of. Is it Bloodlines 2? That vampire game that's had a really crazy development. The previous developer got fired and these guys are being brought in to finish it. So seeing what they've done with this as like an interactive story, the horror elements, the atmosphere is really on point. I'm really interested in seeing what they do with Bloodlines now because this is great. I do like these. I'm not a horror guy. They probably get me. I would have a stroke trying to play this. But I definitely appreciate where they're coming from. I do like the interactive story type games though, where it's like this. It's almost like a movie, but told in interactive game form. I. I dig that. I like that.
Chard: But there's. There's more control. It's not. It's not in the vein of like man from Medina or what's another one they just did the remake of that has Hayden Penetary in it. It's like the choose your own adventure story kind of games. This one is not. You are in complete control of the character. It's first person view. You, you're moving about, you're moving stuff around, you make wrong decisions, you die, you come back. So it's not a game where it's like I'm just scared the entire time, but I can't die. Like summer 58 was like, you don't die in summer 58.
Wulff: Yeah.
Chard: Unless you die in your chair because you had a heart attack because of all the jump scares in the game. But the character cannot really die in summer 58. This one just. You fall off of the rig, you die. You get attacked by the creature, you die. So there is risk that's involved in that. Which was what I liked about it because at first I thought it was just going to be like summer 58 where it was. You just play the story, you get a few jump scares, you get some eerie backgrounds. It is what it is. But this one, it delivered on all points. And I'll tell you, there's some characters that things happen to and you're like. It really affects you like on an emotional level. Like you actually feel like. Because there's so much emotion in the voice acting in this game that you feel connected with all the characters that are stuck on this Rig with you trying to figure out how to get out of it. I was really, I mean again for a five hour game, super impressed with how well this game played out. And it's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful.
Wulff: Yeah, this, this looks really interesting. I've, I think I'm too much of a chicken shit to actually play this one. I can only handle so many scary games.
Jake: Yeah, you did isolation though.
Wulff: I did.
Chard: You did.
Wulff: I absolutely loved it and I think everybody should play it. But yeah, I was a chicken shit the whole time, screaming at everything, hiding, running away.
Chard: There's yellow lockers you can jump in in this game. And I was like, Yep, locker sim 2025. I'm, I'm hanging out.
Jake: So that should be a game awards category. Best locker game of the year goes to. That's.
Chard: Yeah, I think it's done in Unreal 5.
Jake: Oh.
Chard: They say it's kind of got some Lovecraftian. I don't, I mean there's some tentacles. That's as close as Lovecraftian as it gets, I think, in my opinion. But I, it's the site. It's definitely psychological horror. It definitely messes with your head. Mess. You'll definitely stop in your tracks if you hear any kind of sound and go, what was that? How are we doing this? So it's, I, I, yeah, I'd pick it up. It's a fun play. It's, it's quick but it's, it's, I think it's worth the time. This, this game really, really stood out to me. I think it's really well done.
Jake: Awesome. That's a good pick.
Wulff: Yeah.
Jake: And also like under 40 bucks, which is, which is great. Like I love these kind of games. There's, especially with all the recent, you know, controversy with Nintendo and charging extra for the games and even non Nintendo publishers pumping up to 70 bucks a game. Like there is room for games that $60. There's, there's totally a market for it. Some of the best games we played in recent years have been less than 60 bucks. Right. Like hell. Blotro is what, five bucks. Vampire survivors. Right. So. And like we're cleaner free. This one's like under 40. Clear, obscure, coming up. That looks great. That's also around 30 bucks. There's been a lot of great games.
Chard: Discount on it right now too. And it's not even out yet, which is awesome. No, I'm just saying. No, that's cool though. That, cool that Steam is doing something for a brand. I mean this is a brand new game. This this company has never made.
Jake: They do it for all games though. Blueprints is 10% off too.
Chard: I think it's cool with all the. About being 80 goddamn dollars for a game. You can get a brand new 20, 30 hour game for 40 bucks. That's pretty cool.
Jake: It's. It's good to know that. Especially with people like me and you, Chart, who have this real problem with buying games we don't fucking need. And the FOMO is real. At least we're not going to spend 90 bucks on. Well, not 90, $80 on Mario Kart. It's going to be spending on Claire Obscura and all the other games. Yeah, gosh, it's a whole other thing. I realized what we did. I realized what we missed last week. We missed again this week.
Chard: No, I just thought about it.
Jake: We're going to pause. We'll do this after my game. We're going to talk about announcement.
Chard: Yeah, yeah, I thought about it too, because I just looked.
Jake: I can't believe I forgot about that.
Chard: Hey, we're just in automatic mode. We're just going through the motions. We don't usually talk about that specific thing, but it's a pretty big milestone.
Jake: So. Yeah, I'm going to type something in the discord for you too. You can think about it while I'm talking about my pick. Okay? Okay. Okay. So we've had Wear cleaner and we've had the still. Was it. The still goes to deep. I keep your name up. What is it? Chard.
Wulff: Still wake.
Jake: Still wakes the deep. Okay.
Chard: Still wakes.
Jake: Still wakes the deep. That's a good pick. Mine. All right, so a couple weeks ago we were talking about ideas for episodes and I'm like, okay, we haven't done hidden gems in a while and there's always great games that people don't that miss on or sleep on, so let's do one of those. And then I realized, oh, crap, I don't have a hidden gem. So to avoid pulling in gp. Sorry, GP and picking a game that has a billion people playing it, I went and looked through some recent Steam games that were on my wish list and I saw one. I'm like, oh, this is perfect. And the game I picked is milk. Inside a bag of milk. Inside a bag of milk. Inside a bag of milk. And I'm like, this is perfect because inside we'll get to the outside one in a minute. We'll get to the outside.
Wulff: That's a different one.
Jake: That's a different one. And this is perfect because we joke about you know I'm Canadian, hahaha. Canadians have bagged milk. It's the freshest damn thing you'll ever taste. But whatever. So I thought this would be funny, it'd be a great gag. And milk inside a bag of milk is only a buck, a buck 50American. I believe it is. So like you know, $2 Canadian. So again, hard to go wrong. And their views are like overwhelmingly positive. And everybody's raving about this game. The reviews and on Steam were kind of cryptic. I'm like, okay, I'll give it a shot. I've never heard of this game before in my life. Never saw it. I literally went in on the idea of oh, it's bag of milk gag. That must be funny. Maybe it's Canadian developer or something. He's not, he's actually Russian. He lives in Japan now. He's a musician slash indie game developer. And he's done a few things. Most of his games are on his itch profile. But this game is a psycho psych, psychotropic thriller horror game, Psycho horror game kind of, but not jump scare scary. Hold on, let me pull up the clip here real quick. And it starts off first off, this game is $50 and it's only like 22 minutes as we're talking about short things. And I'm going to pull it up real quick. But it starts off in this. Enough. You pick your language and the screen, the title screen starts off with the simple help me buy some milk. Like okay. And you click on it and immediately the graphics are very distinctive and in your face it is almost like a Rorschach test, like the Inkblot test in terms of graphics in that it's pixels, only three colors. You have black, red, magenta, very low res pixel art. And then some scenes and I think this is by design some scenes you almost can't tell what you're looking at. And it kind of gives you along with the dialogue. You kind of interpret the story as you go along. This game is not what I expected. You basically, you're basically the voice inside of a girl's head. An unnamed protagonist who simply has to go to the store local gas station to get a bag of milk for her mother. But as she's walking toward the gas station, she's talking to you, the voice in her head. And she's trying to find ways to like rehearse and practice the speech that she's going to use to talk to people to buy milk. And it's pretty clear that when you realize that she basically has Maybe schizophrenia, maybe it's crippling anxiety, some kind of trauma. There's definitely mental illness at play. And that has always been interesting to me because that is a topic that is almost never discussed in video games. There's only a handful of games that kind of go into that topic. And I don't even want to say game because I feel it's not like this is not a fun game. This is more of an experience. It's actually a visual novel. It's on the Ren'py engine for those who are familiar. And it's. It's definitely maybe a visual novella, I guess it's very short, but it's the story of a girl who's has basically from her point of view, you go with her as she's learning to mask a sense of normalcy as she has to go and do the most mundane of tasks, literally going to the store, walking to the store to buy a bag of milk. And you basically see from her dialogue the anxiety that she faces doing it. Like the. The opening of the game where she basically is explaining how she's rehearsing the purchasing of milk and what she's going to say to the person. Because she's not familiar on how to speak to people or when she speaks to people, it's hard for her mind to wrap around the concept of, well, they're not going to like it if I repeat the same words over and over again. That's now how normal people think. People are used to you saying things with different phrases and different words, right? And as she's discussing how she's going to approach the simple task of buying something from a store, she realizes, oh, I'm not walking on the sidewalk, I'm half walking on the road. This is not normal. This is not correct. And you're that stream of consciousness with her along the way as she's describing how she's functioning this task. And you have options. It is a visual novel, so you have options to pick dialogue to respond to her because she does occasionally talk to you. And you can either try and guide her on the proper things to say and to do and to act, or. Or you can insult her, belittle her, right? Be that voice in the back of the head that you don't want, the one that you're not supposed to listen to as a person. Right? So it's a very serious topic of a game. And I've not seen anything like this before. If you. If you play the bad voice, the game ends early. You get a bad Ending. But if you try and coach her along as she's going through the motions of the dialogues and you get her to buy the milk and return home, you do get an ending sequence, but you slowly unravel through the way she sees the world. Kind of like you understand the trauma she's experienced. There's a sequence where she goes. Has a flashback to her father and finding his body on the ground. It doesn't fully tell you what happened. And the imagery is very abstract. And that's kind of what I dig about this game. It's abstract imagery. So when you look at what you think is on the floor, it even asks you, what do you think you see before you? And you can say blood. Like you think it looks like blood. It looks like a dead body. And that's pretty much what it is. It seems like there's a murder or a suicide of her father at play and that's caused some trauma to the kid. It's a fascinating freaking trip. I want people to play it. I actually don't want to show much more of this because it's very short, but I've never seen. First off, I've played very few visual novels. This is like one of five I've played in my life. And if more were like this, I would play a lot more of these in that. It's rare to have a game that takes such a serious topic like mental. Mental health, and so accurately shows what it can feel like to be a person who has some kind of affliction like this and has to deal with the day to day of life, the most mundane of tasks, and how challenging it is to kind of get through a sequence. Right? The social interactions with people. When you are somebody who's afraid to even leave your bedroom each day, right? Somebody who maybe likes to talk to people, but you don't know how to handle yourself in social situations and how to deal with the intricacies of talking to people. It feels in the dialogue here like they really capture that. And it's such a short thing. It's 20 minutes. It's not a long game. But because of how well it's written or how well it handles the subject matter, if you go back and look at the Steam reviews, every single person who praises it, is praising it, because quite frankly, they probably have one or two of these qualities themselves and can see themselves in this game. And that is impactful to me. When you can play a game like this and feel like you can connect to the game outside of the normal realm of gaming, I guess so. It's very short game. I don't think you guys have heard of it. It is popular enough that I think for people who are individual novels have heard of it, but outside of that niche I don't think anybody's aware of. Did get a Switch release a couple years ago, which I love to see for indie games. But I guess. Have you guys even heard of this game? Probably not, no.
Wulff: Not until you told us about it, no.
Jake: Yeah. Yep. There was a sequel to Milk Inside a Bag of Milk instead of a bag of milk. The sequel is surprisingly called Milk Outside of a Bag of Milk. Milk Outside of a Bag of Milk Outside of Bag of Milk. That is much longer. It's about an hour and a half to go through that one. I picked that one up as well. It's 10 bucks. I figure I like the first one so much I might as well. And I play through that one. It is dramatically different. The graphics are much more anime inspired, more visual novel adjacent to what I'm more familiar with with visual novels. Much more dialogue, much more pointy, clicky interface. There's an animated cutscene in the beginning that kind of recaps the first game. It's not nearly as good. It's almost like this kind of game for me. The 20 minute sequence of events focused on one simple act of going to the store, going back, confronting your mother. That sequence was great. But when they tried to expand on it with her going home and meeting her mother and being stuck in her bedroom, that expand. The story was almost too much and I didn't like the quality of the dialogue. The dialogue kind of went off the rails. Being such a tight focus thing is very impactful. But the sequel I think was. I think they lost the. I think they lost the narrative, to be honest. But the first one, especially for a buck fifty if you are. I don't even. How do you say, are you interested in this kind of game? Because you're not. Nobody's. Nobody's interested in a game about mental health and dealing with anxiety. But if you're somebody who has any of those qualities. Right. Or have somebody in your family who does, it's an interesting way to see. Perhaps a way that they might see the world, I think is the way I would describe it. So bit of a weird pick. Not one I normally would have found.
Chard: I disagree. There was a time in my life where I was very much interested in psychology and the brain. Doing the crazy things that the brain will do and. And games like that that bring out a re A real depiction of multiple personality or schizophrenia or, or some kind of anxiety. Like you said, it interests me. It actually very much is very interesting to see those kinds of things just because you can kind of get, you get a better view as to what someone with that is dealing with it as a force, as a. As opposed to someone who is an extrovert and just goes out and talks to everybody and it just says hi. You know, it's. I, you know, seeing it from a different lens I think really, really helps to, to kind of understand when, if and when you run into somebody like that, how you can handle it, like what, you know, what needs to happen. So I don't know. I think that's a great pick. I think that's a cool thing. And, and as for the gaming aspect of it, I really like, I like those graphics. There's a game that I was kind of poking around called Faith that is. It's kind of. It's almost like a horror game. But it looks like an eight bit or even like, like, like King's Quest, like three right before the remaster style of, of graphics where it's very blocky in like two or three colors in the game. And I, I dig that and I like, I like the way they're using that art style to, to show how like it's. It's hard to explain. Maybe it's the artist to me that it's like conflicted with. You just see the two color kind of colors and it makes everything more muddled than more defined and it's harder to understand. And I think, I think that helps tell the story that it's trying to tell.
Jake: I don't know.
Chard: It's weird. I'm weird, but I like it.
Jake: Yeah. And like the presentation, even the music as well is very atmospheric. This is a game if you throw in headphones, play in the dark. Is it a horror game? Horror game like jump scares? No, but it's. It's definitely has that feeling of putting you on edge. Like just wearing headphones with the stereo sound and the background noise and with the music is pretty, pretty awesome. Like it's very well done package for that. The, the guy again, the guy who created this is also a musician. He has most of the soundtrack up on YouTube. I think you could buy the soundtrack as well. So just a really potent combination of the lo fi visuals that are definitely open to an interpretation with stellar music and atmosphere. It's just. I see why I got such great reviews on Steam, but it's just, again, it's such a. I don't know of any other visual novels that would be like this. Like I've seen a few visual novels. Like was it Doki? Doki Literature Club, I think is a visual novel. I considered one, but it's more gamified, I guess, you know, And I've played. I played a few other ones that are definitely more classic visual novels, but none of them felt like they'd be as impactful of a narrative as this has been, which is kind of. Kind of interesting.
Wulff: There's a black and white 8 bit style horror game as well. I can't remember what it's called.
Jake: Oh, that's the guy that likes Silent Hill or I think or it's inspired Silent Hill or something. Oh, what the hell is that one called? Sweet Something Sweet Home. Is that what it's called?
Wulff: Was it.
Jake: I have to take a look now. Check my Mind palace.
Chard: Checking that. Mind Palace.
Jake: No, that's a. That's. That. That's not it. Oh my. No, no. Sweet Home was a horror game, but it was like a NES game. That's not it. I. I think I know the one you're talking about where it's all black and white aesthetic. I think there might be red blood in it as well, but there's definitely power in limited visuals.
Wulff: Let me see if I can. It looks like it's called World of Horror.
Jake: Okay. World of Horror. I can play that one. Oh yeah. Okay. This is the one I was thinking about. I think Dave from Tadpog was talking about this one. I believe it was. This one also looked really good too. This is a Japanese game, 1 bit pixel art style. Yeah, yeah.
Chard: Oh, I like that.
Jake: Oh no, it's not Japanese. He's Polish. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I. I dig the. I dig the style. Like, I also like the Sierra Adventure games like Uchard and I played a punch of those as well. And. Yeah, but like at least. But those are more like classic games and I like the stories they're telling, but I like the game mechanics of exploration and puzzles. There's no puzzles in this. It's just this weird thing. But it's definitely an experience. Much like like your pick. It's. It's more of like an experience and it's kind of. You're along for the ride and it's interesting and there's prompts for you talk to the person and whatnot. But it's just. It's telling the story from a different perspective. I'm not used to seeing in games. It's interesting the whole Idea of folks with, you know, who are this way or trying to find a ways to like mask to fit in socially. I feel a lot of this in this, in this game. So not the most, you know, glamorous pick of gaming, but I still think it qualifies as a hidden gem. And like, I see the people who've played this, especially those who relate to it, love it. So if this sounds like something people are into, they should definitely check it out. I, I've no, I don't know anybody who hates this game. Everybody's like, It's a buck 50, it's impactful and it's got a hell of an atmosphere. So. Yeah, that's interesting.
Chard: Totally.
Jake: Okay. All right, well, so to finish on a better note or a more light in the hard to note, we forgot something last week. Last week, Press me to cancel. Hit 250 episodes. That's a pretty big milestone. And we were going to talk about it last week, but the Nintendo had this polarizing Nintendo direct and an hour and 40 minutes later we kind of forgot about talking about the 250th episode. So this week we have 251 episodes. Yay. At 251ish, it's a great milestone. So I mean, first off, just to say that, you know, this has been, it's been great to impress with you. Cancel. We've been doing this for five years, I think wolf when we started before. So this has been great and obviously we've had some folks change over the years, but it's been, been great and I've loved every minute of doing this. So 251 is definitely a milestone for us. So I want to take a few minutes to thank you guys. Thank anybody listening and watching Press B. Thank you for sharing the show with your friends and family. That definitely helps grow the show. And we want to keep doing press B for, you know, as long as we're able to. This has been great and we've done, we've had a lot of success, especially last year or so. It's been. Been growing. So this has been great.
Chard: Agreed. I you heard you guys talking about it many moons ago when it was the four of you and I was like, man, I want to get in on that.
Wulff: I think you were watching when we were just streaming River River City.
Chard: Yeah, it was ready for River City.
Wulff: Underground and we were just talking about it at that point. Point.
Chard: Yeah. And I, that I started doing my fanfic for you guys. That was, that was fun. Yeah, no, I, I was, I was so like, thrilled. And then you guys started doing them and I was, I was listening to him at work and I loved, I loved all the episodes you guys did and then, and then getting the invitation with, with Sinistar because he was, he's. He's my friend. He was my friend throughout all this anyways. And both of us getting to get brought in at the same time was like, bro, we like called each other like dude, we both got in. We're. We're both part of the team. So. And I absolutely love doing this every Saturday. It's, it's something that I, I really look forward to every week and when we're done and we talk about what we plan on, it's, it's one of the few things, you know, outside of what my streaming was that I would actually like put time into and I'd sit down and I'd do some research. I'd look up games and try and find new things and, and I think maybe a helper, a hindrance Jake with my fomo, but this, this, this project has allowed me to venture forth into things that I normally wouldn't play or I normally wouldn't look into or talk or touch on. And, and it's, it's very eye opening every time. I, I love doing the Game of the Year episodes with you guys. My favorite, I think my favorite night GP kind of echoed it in our, in our thing here is, is the Sisyphean thing that we decided to do. And though it's, it's a running joke that's up and down, it's still a lot of fun to talk about the games that we're playing and, and it helps clear the board. But I, I love all the, I love our inside jokes that we talk about throughout the week and this has just been super fun. This is something I've always dreamt about doing. You could ask my wife. He's. Oh, I've been on. I've been on numerous other sports related podcasts or gaming relating podcasts that just never stuck and this one was so. It's so put together and, and continues to be such. And it, you know, we joke about it being a show or technical difficulties, but to be honest with you, this thing is so well put together that it's, it's polished and it's wonderful and it makes me proud to show it off to other people that I get to be a part of this. So thank you, thank you, thank you listeners, thank you friends, family, and thank you guys for again letting, letting us Be a part of this. This is. This is cool.
Jake: Yeah. I will say the Sisyphean Games are been pretty good for me as well. Although Battletoads. I've been cursed lately with those. Sorry, Wolf. Go ahead.
Chard: Really like that?
Wulff: No, I like our battle toads. Reinforce what Chard was just saying. I think it kind of helps the fact that we're all sort of like nerds for trying to have high production value for this thing that literally has zero income. Five years now.
Jake: Zero. Try negative. That's true.
Wulff: I know, right? Like, we're putting production value into this with nothing in return. Just the fun it provides us.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: It's all hobby, but it's been a great time. One of my favorite episodes I like to tell people about is the Gary Oldman episode, because that was back when we were pre recording things and we'd just be like, well, we got to record an episode this week because it was. We weren't live streaming them. So sometimes we would just come up and be like, either we hadn't done the research that week, big surprise, or we just didn't. We got there and we were like, I don't know what to talk about. And so that one was just like the Sandra Bullock episode. It was just letting the tangents win. Right? Like, and it was.
Chard: I didn't do a very good job in our tangent episode because we stay. We stayed on.
Wulff: It's a little harder to do when you. When you're trying to come to the table with a live stream with a planned. Right topic. Whereas before it was just like, well, we're here and we're not prepared for this, so let's just do something random.
Jake: Right? That's awesome. Yeah. I think one of our episodes, like that was the bidet episode, I think was one of those where we're just like, let's just talk about the. The stupid bidets that we've all bought. Like, three or four of us on the podcast bought bidet attachments for a toilet. Did we plan it.
Wulff: We planned it as an April Fools.
Jake: I know. I wanted to talk about mine. I still love mine. Man, that tushy was the best thing I ever bought for the bathroom.
Wulff: Day. Downstairs and upstairs.
Chard: You're not the only one that. That. I'm the only one on the episode or on the show that doesn't have one of.
Jake: Apparently.
Chard: I'm living a hovel. I live in a hovel. You know, I'm living in my. My hobbit hole down here and using pineapples to wipe my ass.
Jake: Apparently tell you, especially in this economy, you want to save some money, go get a tushy for your. Your ass. It's the thing that's great. It's cool and refreshing. I. Yeah, I won't go in. We should do another episode of Bidets with you. I want another one. But yeah, no, this would be great. I, you know, I think in terms of production values, there's one thing with this has led to a whole lot of learning. Right when we started in the audio, Paul should a lot of our audio work and did great with it and I tried to fill in and then when he left, I tried picking it up and having to learn how to use a daw. Right. For those who don't know Inside Baseball, I use Reaper as a daw to put the episodes together. Learning how to use audio plugins and figuring out what the hell compressors are and levels and all that kind of fun stuff. I love doing it and it's been fun learning that over the years. But it's a. It's a lot of work. It's not, it's not easy. And people don't realize for one show you spend between 6 to 12 hours each week on podcast stuff. It's crazy sometimes. So. And like do when we brought in the YouTube, which I love doing YouTube as well because that's a whole other audience for the podcast and that's why it's been so great. We have lots of great people who listen to us, but we also have people now who watch us. But trying to bring in video, that's a whole other freaking monster. So, I mean, leaning heavily on a little bit of streaming I did. And with the work you guys do for streaming, like, we kind of know what to do, but there's been a lot of learning across the board. So it's something that you kind of just improve on every. Every month you try and work on more stuff and try and streamline how you do it. That's one of the reasons why we did the live stream with YouTube. It was just easier to live stream it and take it for what it is and then have that there and not have to deal with encoding issues or uploading issues with YouTube each week, which was the problem we were having. Right. Or dealing with archiving on Twitch, which we're not an affiliate on Twitch, so we don't have access to archives. So kind of trying to figure out how the best way to approach it. And I think we found a really good flow for how we do the podcast. And I think I like how it's been working and I think it's being received pretty well so far, so. But we're always looking to kind of improve things as we go. You know, when buying a shitty mic or buying a new plugin or whatever.
Chard: Buying a Steam deck instead of a shitty mic.
Jake: Well, I mean, eventually I got that Steam deck, so, you know, just, you know, that's what credit cards are for.
Chard: Right.
Jake: Until we strike it rich with that podcast money like Joe Rogan. Right. That's how. That's the goal.
Chard: That's right. That's right.
Jake: No, it's a hobby, but it's a, it's a serious hobby. Yeah. So my favorite episode. There is a lot that are great. I'm glad you mentioned Gary Oldman Wolf, because that was a good one. I, I'm gonna, I like the bracket episodes. I think we're at our best when we're, when we're getting heated, yelling, getting pissed at each other. One of the ones where we got real heated was the best. God.
Chard: Yeah.
Jake: People steal my pick. Jared, you wouldn't know what that's like.
Chard: No, never.
Jake: I, I really like the, the episode we did on the controllers where we ranked the best controller. I don't even remember who won that one. It doesn't matter.
Chard: That's all that matters. It was Super Nintendo. The Super Nintendo one.
Jake: Okay, good. I can live with that one. Yeah, there's some of those.
Chard: The original Nintendo, the Super Nintendo and, and the Switch.
Jake: It was the Switch, like Pro Control.
Chard: Pro Pro Pro controller.
Wulff: I thought the PS5 controller got third or something, didn't it?
Chard: No, it got, I think it got like first place loser because we, we did the runner ups or whatever.
Jake: Or we did the fourth.
Chard: Nothing wrong with fourth place, stupid.
Jake: I don't know. There's one we did on, I think platformers and you guys didn't go along. You guys didn't want to pick mar. The original Mary Brothers. I'm like, how. I was so pissed. I was so angry after we recorded. I was like, how can you not pick the original Mario Brothers? It is the grand nanny of platforming games, really. And those are the ones that are the fun to listen to and go back to. But yeah, those, those are always good. I love doing those. Even though they're a lot of work to set up and plan and get things going. But they're always, I feel like, worth it. So those are fun ones.
Chard: Yeah.
Jake: All right, well, I mean, I'm glad we called that out. 251. That's. That's a good milestone.
Chard: We should do it every first.
Jake: Every first.
Chard: 301, 351. That's just the thing.
Jake: Now just do it that way we.
Chard: Celebrate the one after. We're always a day late.
Jake: Dude, I can't believe we almost forgot again this week. Like, I got. I gotta write shit down when we do these episodes. For sure.
Wulff: Honestly, I remembered partway through my game, and I was gonna bring it up, too, but I did, too.
Chard: But I also have the recording. Since we did the different recording style last week. I have my. But it's labeled 250. And I saw that. I went, shit, I got to say something.
Wulff: It's okay.
Jake: That's good. All right, well, I think that's a good episode. Guys talked about some great games, talked about some great episodes. We're going to keep going. Lots of great ideas for press B throughout the year. Lots of good stuff we want to do. So anything you guys want to shout out that you're playing? I know. Wolf, how about you? Blueprints coming soon.
Wulff: Yeah, Blueprints coming soon. I've been playing the crap out of Gunfire Reborn still. I absolutely love that. Like, my buddy who is like, he. He has limited ability to play first person shooters because they make him. They gave him motion sickness. Really bad.
Chard: Right?
Jake: Okay.
Wulff: This one doesn't do that to him. So he's been playing the crap out of it. Like, we're. We're literally, like, so jonesing to play this that we'll just play it single player and just level up. And then we come to the table every Thursday and it's like, dude, let's. This is what I figured out.
Jake: Okay.
Wulff: This is what I figured out. So we're, like, throwing pointers at each other with experiences we had. Sharon, like, this has got great synergy with that. Like, it's. It's been so much fun.
Jake: Is it a roguelike, then?
Wulff: It is. It's a roguelite first person shooter gonna get me. And it's up to four players. And it's like the synergies you come up with are so bizarre. And when we're playing, like, single player, we always play it safe. But every Thursday night when we play, like, you know what? Screw it. I'm gonna try this and see how it goes. And usually it's a massive success and it's wild, and it just makes the game so broken. It's fun.
Jake: I know, I know. That's one that you wanted, an episode with Sinistar, because he's been playing it as well.
Wulff: Yeah, that's coming In a couple weeks.
Jake: Yeah, I want to play that one. I didn't realize.
Wulff: Just.
Jake: Awesome. Okay.
Wulff: And it's active development.
Jake: Oh, it's early access game.
Wulff: It came out a few years. No, it came out a few years ago. And they keep like, they, they show the development roadmap for new seasons and content and so they've got like a constant flow of stuff on the horizon. So it's not like it was just done and left alone. Like.
Jake: Right.
Wulff: It has three DLCs right now and the DLCs come with characters and guns. And then it's got another DLC on the horizon with the next season.
Jake: Crap. I think I'm in Rebirth and I kind of fell off of.
Chard: Yeah, it's Stellar Blades coming out for PC though. June 25th.
Jake: Yeah, that's another one I wanted to play with. With mods for purely, you know, non gooner reasons. I don't know.
Wulff: For the articles.
Jake: Yeah. Yes, for the articles. It's for the art of the game, really. You know, I love my art in video games. That's crazy. I didn't realize it was a rogue. Like it was like all. Yeah, when we talk, when we do the episode on it. I'm really interested. I might be in on that one. Yeah, that sounds. Sounds really great. Yeah. I just bought blueprints because I wanted a more chill, casual game because I wanted to break. I didn't want to start my Sisyphean game. Oh, wait, sorry. I didn't want to continue playing my Sisyphean game.
Chard: So.
Wulff: Yeah, I'm on a break from mine. Honestly. I'm like 80 hours in and I'm like, okay, I need to play other stuff for now. I'll get back to it. But I needed a break because that's all I played for like two and a half months.
Chard: Yeah. Really digging into that thing.
Jake: You got months to go. You're fine. It's fine. We got lots of time. It's good. Char, what do you. What have you been playing lately?
Chard: I've been playing the Last of us on PS5. The. I guess the remake at. The remake.
Wulff: The Last of Us Part one?
Jake: Yeah.
Chard: Last of Us Part one, Part two. Or no, I think.
Wulff: I think that's what they called the remaster. Was the Last of Us Part one?
Chard: Yeah, it was Part one. It's. It was actually gifted to me by Sin Starts and Stress for my birthday when I got the PS5 like two years ago. And I, I, you know, I moved my PlayStation downstairs because I get up early with the dogs on Saturdays and Sundays and I usually play something that's on there and I've been looking through. I just finished Jedi, Fallen Order and Horizon, Forbidden west. And I was just trying to think of something and I was like, I haven't kicked into this. I want to watch the show. And I told my wife, I will not watch the show until I finish the game so I can get, you know, the concept of what the two are. And finally I popped it in, loaded it up, and I fired it up and I was like, why did I take so long to play this game? This is great. I'm really enjoying it.
Wulff: I did the same. I did the same thing with Part two. A buddy gave it to me for my birthday. The same buddy who I play games with every week because I've known him for, shit, almost 30 years now. So he gave it to me, I think, for my birthday and I didn't touch it for like six months.
Chard: Yeah.
Wulff: And when I finally started playing it, I just couldn't. I streamed it and I was like, I want to play more, but I'm streaming it.
Chard: Right.
Wulff: So I limited to those windows to play it, but I would have absolutely burned through it in like two, three days had that not been the case.
Chard: Really good. The second story is.
Wulff: The first one is so good. And to me, the second one outdid the first.
Jake: Really? Okay.
Chard: They just. They literally just released like Last Week, Part 2, Remastered or Remake or whatever, and I'm now itching to pick that up and play that one because I've loved one so much that I already know that I'm probably going to enjoy too. So.
Jake: Yeah, well, for those who haven't played any of them, there's. They just announced yesterday, Charred the Last of Us Complete, which is part one and two combined together on one disc for PS5. Because people are joking about it getting yet another release for Last of Us. It's pretty funny.
Wulff: Still haven't touched Emotional Roller Coaster the first game puts you on does not compare to the roller coaster in the second game.
Chard: It's so good. So, yeah, so I've been. I've been playing a lot of the Last of Us. I've been screwing around with rpo, with quietly, with the arp, the RMH crew, Dave the Diver. I've been messing around with. I fired up Silent Hill 2 remake the other day too, because I wanted to do the new game. Plus because you get the chainsaw and freaking absolutely love that game. They just announced Titanfall 3. It's coming out. That's kind of cool. Yeah, Yeah.
Jake: I know there's rumors, like official. Official.
Chard: Yeah, I've heard rumors. I've heard that it's in production. I hope I'm not wrong about that.
Jake: But no, I think.
Chard: And yeah, I'm kind of just floating around the, the digital sphere right now. I did the, the playthrough of still waste the deep. I'm be posting up videos of that entire playthrough probably this weekend. If I can get that video I deleted on accident, found or redone. And I'll have a full playthrough of that. So you can enjoy that with me. If you guys don't want to buy it and play it, you can watch me play through the whole thing. And since blueprints is 10 off, that is now in my library as well. So looks like we might be having a discussion about that in the future.
Jake: Yeah, Blueprints is definitely, definitely one. I was, I was like. I saw game journalists were talking about this for the last two weeks, but they weren't allowed to say the name of the game they're playing because of embargoes. Review embargoes. It had a really long one, but they were raving about it for the last few weeks and it kind of slipped out. And then seeing the reviews and then I watched a little bit of gameplay just to see what it was about. I'm like, all right, I have to give it a go because if it was like anything like inscription or tunic, then I know I'm going to be in. So I'm definitely digging it so far. Again, when you have a game you play in bed on the Steam deck and you're up till 1:30 in the morning, it's. It's a good time. That was definitely for me.
Chard: That was definitely inscription for me. So, yeah, if it's anything like that, I'm gonna, I'll fire it up tonight when we lie down and, and give it a shot. But yeah, I mean, but I gotta get something that'll get me through the next two weeks, guys, because I'm, I am. I am so jazzed for CLEAR Obscure Expedition 33. I. I've not. I haven't been this excited about an rpg. I can't even remember the last one that I was this excited for. This is going to be so much fun. I'm usually pumped about some kind of horror game release or third person scary game. This is gonna, this is so like back to what I used to do when I started like really getting into streaming and stuff that I'm probably either gonna record this. Or I may stream a couple episodes of this because I really want to play it. So it's gonna be good. Gonna be a good time.
Jake: All right. For those who are listening, we are part of the Superpod network of podcasts. Lots of great gaming podcasts there. Gaming shows like the Elder Trolls who talk about the Switch 2 a lot. A lot of us on the Network Talk about Switch 2 last week. We have find time talking about Split Fiction, which is another game that I want to check out. Not only because it destroyed destroyed me, because I counterpicked it on Fantasy Critic, but also because the game looks good.
Wulff: I have screwed you so much on this year's Fantasy Critic.
Jake: Not only did I counterpick freaking Split Fiction, but then I, with my meager $10, I. I bid a little bit of money to try and scam blueprints and you outbid me by a couple of bucks. And the game is like 90 on Metacritic. I'm. You are dominating our fancy critic.
Chard: Yeah, he's killing it this year.
Jake: It's nuts. Also gaming together podcast, they are talking about 33 mortals, which is another great game I want to check out. It's like, it feels like Hades, but it's like online with dozens of people. It looks really freaking rad. And Also they celebrated 200 episode milestone this week as well. So that was another thing to remind me about ours. So lots of great shows. Check them out. Superpodnetwork.com also you can check out us. Press me to cancel. You can find us at pressby to cancel.com you can find us on pressby to cancel, on YouTube, on Apple Podcasts, whatever YouTube music does Amazon, I don't know. Talk to your smart fridge and ask it for a podcast called Pressby and you probably get us. I like to do that game. I like to ask Alexa, Alexa play Press B to cancel latest episode and then it'll pull up our fucking bidet episode from four years ago because Amazon sucks. But we're there, all of us, so it's great. But yeah, this has been great. Please join our discord presspedicancel.com for links. Come join us over in Discord. Or if you want, drop a comment on this video over at YouTube or leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. All that stuff kind of accumulates and helps us grow as a show. We got a few subscribers last week, which has been really, really awesome. So we thank you again Everybody for your support.
Wulff: 199.
Chard: Yeah, we're one away from 200. So close.
Jake: I'm Gonna go ask my daughter.
Wulff: Like the 200 199. 200 199.
Jake: That's my daughter. She's helping by unsubbing and subbing over and over again. That's what she does.
Chard: I'm helping.
Jake: I'm helping. It's great. Gotta love kids. Anyway, guys, this has been great. This has been. Press me to cancel. Have a great week. Is a puzzle game. So like art. Do you like those?
Chard: You guys, you were preaching about inscription and tunic and if you are relating this game to that, to that kind of depth, then I can't. How can I say no to that? That sounds really good.
Jake: Like at first glance. And we should be live on everything now. Hello, YouTube. Hello Twitch. Indulge for two minutes. So it's like. It's almost like a board game blueprints, right? Where it's like you have keys and you have coins and you're trying to put down tiles to build a house to get to the end of it. And that's the core gameplay loop. If you look, if you don't mind that, then you're gonna love it. Everything else is on top of that. Like all the puzzles and the riddles and stuff. But it's not right away. Like in the beginning you feel like, oh, this is just like a board game. But there's definitely a lot more to it than. Than that.
Chard: I don't doubt it. I watched, you know, we all love ign, so I watched an IGN review.
Jake: And this guy, well, they give it a seven.
Chard: Gushing. No, he gave it almost a ten. Like he's like, I'm really okay. Well, yeah, he gushed about this game. He said this. He says he feels like the people that made this game made it specifically for him.
Jake: Okay.
Chard: Because it's like right up his alley with all the kind of games that he plays. And I was like, yeah, I don't wanna. I. Damn it.
Jake: Every game critics raven about it charred like everybody and it's. And I can see why. I don't know if it's as. As good as inscription yet. But I'm only like four or five hours into it right now because inscription was great to me because I like the car really opens up at 250 mind blown moments. Sorry, YouTube. Yeah, I don't know how much is that of that is in blueprints, but everybody's talking and the guy that was.
Chard: Talking about it was saying the same where he was just like this thing's really opening up. It just seems like a simple. Like you said, a board Game or a simple whatever. And then it just, like, the more you go, the more you unlock and the more cool stuff you get. Yeah.
Jake: And, like, it's. It's very much like tunic. How we. You know, everybody says, oh, I don't like, you know, Zelda games or I don't like Dark Souls games. Like, that's not tunic. Tunic is much more than that. It is the first 40 hours. You just don't realize that. Right. Anyway. Anyway, it's good. Hopefully, if you guys play it and you like it, we'll do an episode on it. I'd love to talk more, but, like.
Wulff: I literally just bought it. So. Here's.
Chard: Here's the thing.
Wulff: We'll probably end up talking for two hours on it.
Chard: Here's the thing. As a tradition, guys, if. If it's a day that I'm available, which should be. We can do it next weekend. I. You can convince me to buy it. I could be active audience, and you guys can convince me to pick it up and. And preach about it. So, yeah, I'm probably gonna get it. But I'm like. I'm playing Dave. I'm, like, looking at literally all the games that I'm playing right now, and I got a co worker that's playing Liza P. And I was like, I haven't played that in a lot minute. I haven't finished Wukong yet. I haven't finished Dave Diver yet.
Jake: I'm like, why not pick up this month?
Wulff: Humble for Dredge.
Jake: That's another one I wanted to try.
Chard: So. Good. Dredge is really.
Wulff: I've heard nothing but good things about that one.
Chard: I. I have. I have rolled credits on Dredge, and it's. It's a lot of fun. Even Rogue, like, watching me play it, she's like, you're fishing again. She'd roll over. I'll be like, we're doing so much more than fishing. But yes.
Jake: Cthulhu fishing. But yeah.
Wulff: Yeah, I'm fishing unknown horrors. Thank you.
Chard: Yeah, thank you. All the elders fish, I'm finding.
Jake: All right. Okay. I'll host, I guess. And I got a line. I think I had a line. It's.
Wulff: Oh, that's my record box. It's not usually in frame. I was like, what the hell is that?
Jake: Yeah.
Chard: Now I gotta look and see if all my room is fairly clean. So.
Jake: Okay.
Wulff: I mean, I got cords all over the place behind me because I had to pick something in the other room, and I just threw the cords on the floor. I didn't care.
Chard: We're moving around and out of the garage. And I'm using, like, part of my room and part of the spare bedroom to kind of. So I can. My. The attic for my house is right here. It's in my office. So I'm trying to get the boxes up into the attic, but I need a longer. A bigger ladder to do that. So some of the stuff is, like, stacking up for here. But I have it out of eyeshot, making sure that within the camera.
Jake: I've not opened our attic yet. We've been in this house for over a year. I've not opened the attic. I should probably see what's up there.
Wulff: Send the children.
Jake: Send the children up there. Just go.
Chard: Don't see anything ancient or old. Just leave it alone. Because you need a haunted house while.
Jake: You'Re up in there.
Wulff: Yeah. If you hear drums, just walk away.
Jake: And then I get to meet Robin Williams. That'd be a great time. You know, everybody loves that.
Chard: Is that an ostrich? Yeah, the Canadian ostriches.
Jake: Canadian ostriches. Just like American ostriches, but they have tails, right? Wait, no. Ostriches have tails down there too, don't they?
Chard: Yes, they do.
Jake: We're gonna cut all this out.