Fire Escape Cast #88

Summary

Summary of Fire Escape Cast #88

Release Date: August 26, 2024
Hosts: Mike Mahardy, Mary Kish Woo, and Dan Ryker
Podcast: Fire Escape Cast
Episode: #88

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1. Introduction and Guest Banter [00:12 - 01:25]

The episode kicks off with playful banter as Mike Mahardy welcomes listeners back to Fire Escape Cast. The hosts joke about using humorous audio clips featuring their colleague, Jake Decker, setting a lighthearted tone for the episode.

Notable Quote:

Mary Kish Woo: "God, what a ding dong. I love that." [00:42]

---

2. Covering Gamescom and a Hilarious Mix-Up in Germany [01:25 - 04:35]

Mike shares his experiences covering Gamescom for Giant Bomb in Cologne, Germany. Amidst the excitement, he recounts a funny mishap where he accidentally ordered 13 sandwiches due to a language barrier, resulting in him being banned from returning to the restaurant.

Notable Quote:

Mike Mahardy: "They were projecting. Cologne's cool, though. I like it. It was super fun." [04:10]

Mary Kish Woo compares Gamescom to PAX with pretzels, highlighting the cultural differences and unique experiences at the European convention.

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3. In-Depth Review of "Alien Romulus" [06:16 - 13:38]

Mary passionately reviews "Alien Romulus," hailing it as the best sci-fi horror movie in years. She contrasts it with "Aliens," emphasizing Romulus's focus on young adults in desperate situations rather than seasoned experts. The discussion touches on the movie's effective horror elements, particularly the terrifying facehuggers.

Notable Quote:

Mary Kish Woo: "I think it's probably the best sci-fi horror movie I have seen in years. I am screaming this film's praises." [06:32]

Mike and Jake echo her sentiments, agreeing that facehuggers add a new layer of fear compared to the traditional xenomorphs.

---

4. Concerns Over Media Preservation and Game Informer’s Shutdown [19:23 - 21:49]

Mary expresses her dismay over the disappearance of Game Informer's content, underscoring the importance of preserving media history. The conversation shifts to the challenges of maintaining digital archives, with Mike and Jake reflecting on their own content's vulnerability to such losses.

Notable Quote:

Mary Kish Woo: "The history of it is important. And we're just not preserving that work." [19:55]

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5. Personal Anecdotes: Creative Childhood and Unexpected Injuries [22:03 - 28:17]

The hosts delve into personal stories, with Mike reminiscing about his childhood where his father created an elaborate system involving an elf named Fleegle to handle Santa letters. Mary shares her recent struggle with a mysterious hip injury and a humorous recount of losing her phone on a boat due to a selfie stick mishap.

Notable Quote:

Mary Kish Woo: "I have no memory of this." [38:20]

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6. Current Gaming Discussions: "Steamroll Heist 2" and "Natsumon 20th Century Kid" [35:58 - 75:07]

Mary and Mike engage in detailed discussions about games they are currently enjoying. Mary highlights "Steamroll Heist 2," praising its turn-based mechanics and class flexibility. She also introduces "Natsumon 20th Century Kid," a localized Japanese game that combines nostalgic elements with modern gameplay mechanics.

Notable Quote:

Mike Mahardy: "It's a great Steam deck game. ... it's $30. It's well worth it." [45:46]

Mary Kish Woo: “I think it's something that’s very God given to me.” [Specific timestamp not provided]

They explore various game aspects, including strategy layers, character progression, and the unique blend of real-time and turn-based elements that make these games stand out.

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7. Listener Emails and Career Advice [113:03 - 127:34]

Mary and Jake read and respond to listener emails. One from Alex in Australia discusses being proudly frugal, relating to sustainable shaving practices. Another from Josh in Maine seeks career advice on transitioning from theater to filmmaking. Mary offers insightful suggestions on networking and gaining experience through community groups, while Mike emphasizes the importance of strategic planning and minimizing risks during career shifts.

Notable Quotes:

Mary Kish Woo: “Joining groups and social clubs and events that will get you around other like-minded people that are passionate about film...” [117:33]

Jake Decker: “But like, the person who produced it, I went to school with the assistant director…” [127:17]

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8. Upcoming Projects and Wrap-Up [128:20 - 133:39]

The hosts discuss their ongoing and upcoming projects. Jake talks about his short film aimed at film festivals and the collaborative effort behind it. Mary mentions her preparations for TwitchCon, indicating her active involvement in streaming and game discussions. They encourage listeners to support the podcast through Patreon and check out their merchandise.

Notable Quote:

Mike Mahardy: “You are never gonna be the only person with an interest in your area, unless you live in like Greenland, then...” [126:28]

Mary Kish Woo: “I've been playing Tavern Manager Simulator... If you're into Stardew and you want to like sweat on some unbelievable good-looking people.” [71:30]

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Conclusion

In Episode #88 of Fire Escape Cast, the hosts blend humor, personal stories, and in-depth discussions on gaming and media preservation. They offer valuable insights into their experiences covering major gaming events, provide thoughtful reviews of recent films, and engage with listeners through meaningful email responses. The episode concludes with updates on their creative endeavors and a call to support the podcast’s future content, maintaining an engaging and informative dialogue for both loyal listeners and newcomers.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Mary Kish Woo on "Alien Romulus":
  "I think it's probably the best sci-fi horror movie I have seen in years. I am screaming this film's praises." [06:32]

• Mary Kish Woo on Media Preservation:
  "The history of it is important. And we're just not preserving that work." [19:55]

• Mike Mahardy on Career Transition:
  “You are never gonna be the only person with an interest in your area, unless you live in like Greenland, then...” [126:28]

• Mary Kish Woo on Gaming:
  “I've been playing Tavern Manager Simulator... If you're into Stardew and you want to like sweat on some unbelievable good-looking people.” [71:30]

• Listener Email from Josh:
  "As someone with the intention to pivot into filmmaking, I gotta ask, how do you find the courage to make the big first move?" [113:05]

---

Note: Timestamps correspond to the transcript provided and are included to highlight notable moments and quotes from the episode.

Transcript

[Mike Mahardy]

Just talk.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Okay.

[Mike Mahardy]

Go.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Project Fire Escape. Go.

[Mike Mahardy]

Hello, everybody.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Start the podcast.

[Mike Mahardy]

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Good. What?

[Mary Kish Woo]

Do it again.

[Mike Mahardy]

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Fire Escape cast. It is episode 88. I'm Mike Mahardy here, as always, with Mary Kish Woo and Dan Ryker. I've been playing Yellow Taxi.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Go's Vroom.

[Mike Mahardy]

He won't shut up about Yellow Taxi goes Vroom.

[Mary Kish Woo]

God, what a ding dong. I love that. You probably didn't have to look very hard for a clip that made him sound stupid.

[Jake Decker]

I did not. That one seemed. That one seemed like a good one, though.

[Mike Mahardy]

That's Jake Decker.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Jake Decker, Fireschool. Yeah.

[Jake Decker]

I'm here in the flesh.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I'm glad that you're here. Yeah. Well, how many clips do you have?

[Jake Decker]

How many clips of Dan do I have? Well, I actually thought of this, like, four minutes before the episode, and then Mike was like, oh, I'm gonna be five minutes late. So I had time to get two. One's a fart noise and the other was Dan.

[Mary Kish Woo]

All right, we'll use these, but next time.

[Jake Decker]

Next time I'm on, I'll have a whole library. Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Dan's over at covering Gamescom for Giant Bomb in Cologne, Germany. I think Lucy and Tam are there. Gamespot people. It's a fun show.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I saw Minati in a. In a picture in Germany, so I think he's there too.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, it was. It was a. I did it once. It was a fun show. We talked. I know it's Dan's first time. Is it sunset in Portland? Are you melting?

[Mary Kish Woo]

Oh, my gosh. I almost died. Jake, have you done.

[Mike Mahardy]

Have you done. Have either of you done a Gamescom?

[Jake Decker]

I have not. I've wanted to for a while, but the stars have never aligned, I suppose.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Same. It's the one that eludes me. I have been to so many game conferences, including Tokyo Game show, which I think is very difficult to get in. Not just, like, logistically, because it's very far away, but also you have to make sure you get your badge months in advance, and it's not just open to anyone. So you have to be, like, approved and stuff like that. So it. I mean, a lot of times you can't go just because you didn't go through all the hoops that they have. But I've never done Gamescom, which seems like basically a PAX with pretzels.

[Mike Mahardy]

No, Gamescom is.

[Jake Decker]

Smells bad.

[Mike Mahardy]

Gamescom is like E3 for all of Europe and pretzels. A lot of people. Yeah, pretzels. Curry brat. A lot of kolsch, a lot of salted meats, pork.

[Jake Decker]

Didn't you buy like 30 sandwiches for yourself?

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, yeah. I was staying with Dave Jewett, Tamor, Lucy, back when I was at Gamespot and we were staying next to this. What was it? I don't even fully remember where, like what kind of restaurant it was. I think it was like a halal. And I ordered. They didn't speak great English. I didn't speak German. And I tried to order the number 13 and I thought he was asking me to repeat it, but he must have been asking me how many number 13s I wanted, so I said 13 again. So he rang me up for 13 number 13s and then when I pointed out the error, he, like the whole staff, in unison, like, threw up their hands like. Like an Italian family in Brooklyn freaking out on me. They did not like me in Cologne, those people.

[Jake Decker]

And that's why you've never been back? Yep.

[Mike Mahardy]

I'm not allowed back.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Removed from Germany and not allowed to ever return based on ordering 13 of the same sandwich on accident. The worst Uber delivery driver ever.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, they've done. Germany's done some pretty bad stuff too, so I'm surprised that was the thing that you kicked out.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yeah, that's where they draw the line.

[Mike Mahardy]

They were projecting. Cologne's cool, though. I like it. It was super fun. I'm curious. I'm curious to catch up with Dan to see what he thinks of it. Dan's been decent number of places. Jake, you and Dan, have you been on the show since you and Dan went to. What was it, Ghent?

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, I think last time I was on was because Dan was out for something else and I think it was you. Me and Vinny and I. Oh, yeah.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Talked about because I was gone.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I think I was in Europe too, for probably Twitch Con Europe. That's my guess.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. What's. What's shooting video with Dan like?

[Jake Decker]

It was. It was fun because he. Dan just talks to anyone he's got. There's not a lot of shame. So he can just go up to anyone, ask dumb questions, smart questions, all kinds of questions. So for me, recording was great because a lot of content you can get out of it. I could not do what he does, though. I couldn't just walk up to people and ask him, what's this? What's that?

[Mary Kish Woo]

He's just not burdened by the anchors of dignity and self respect that so many of us are plagued with.

[Jake Decker]

I mean, I wasn't going to put.

[Mike Mahardy]

It that way, but Dave Letterman said that man on the street recording is like the lowest form of art. Just let Dan know that when he's back. I know Dan doesn't.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I think it takes a quick wit. I actually have a respect for it. I like watching tiktoks of street man on the street videos as long as they're not disrespectful. But you can be very witty with someone on the fly when you ask them questions and they don't know how to respond or they've been drinking a little too much. And then the. The host is. Has a witty retort. Like, I like that kind of stuff. I just don't like it when it's lazy. And it's often very lazy because you just ask people like really spicy questions and hope that they have like some kind of hockey answer. But the real meat of that type of stuff is the host being good at what they do.

[Mike Mahardy]

Has the huck to a girl endorsed Kamala yet? I've been waiting. If she did, I missed it.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Mary, she's at the DNC convention right now.

[Jake Decker]

She's.

[Mike Mahardy]

She's. She's submitting the delegates for. Where she from? Tennessee or wherever. Anyway, Jake and I were talking when you left the room earlier about Alien Romulus. I saw. You saw it. Did you like it?

[Mary Kish Woo]

I didn't just like it. I loved it. I think it's probably the best sci fi horror movie I have seen in years. I am screaming this film's praises. I was freaking out in the theater. I hope I didn't disturb other people next to me, but I was like the person in the theater that was like, oh, get the out of here. That's so cool. Like, I couldn't believe the shit. They got away with people. I think it's brilliant. I think it's a brilliant film. It is what the series needed. I think it is the best in the series. After Alien. Yes. I think it's better than Aliens.

[Mike Mahardy]

Really?

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yes.

[Jake Decker]

Do you think it's a better movie or like a better horror? Because Aliens is more like action exploit, you know, it's not really horror.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I know. I think it's. I think it's better at both. I think it's better storytelling. I understand that Aliens has its own place and people will probably get really pissed at me for like coming at the series like this. But I think Aliens, a lot of people would agree, still has like a hokiness to it where they're just like, we're foregoing reality and we're just allowing us to have fun in this space. I think Romulus does that a little bit too. But I think it does it better because it has a fresh faced cast of young adults. I say young adults because they're not kids, but they're not experts. Every Alien film is always about experts in the field. You have your, I don't know, the person who is an expert in the field for botany, right? Or you have the guy who's like, I'm an army guy and that's all I know. And then they come together and they fight, they piss and moan because they're all the best at what they do. Romulus is actually about a bunch of young kids that are in an outrageously unfortunate predicament that has forced them into a bummer of a situation where they now have to figure it out for their lives. And they are, they are not sure how they do things like read maps or work guns. And I think that's a fascinating concept. And I think it's more interesting for me to say, what would you do if you were young and just desperate and found yourself in a life or death situation? As opposed to you got a scientist and you got a top notch army vet. And they both don't like each other because they're, they're very diff different but they're also really good at what they do. And it's like, I don't give a shit that some guy's like really good at reading maps. I want to know what desperate people do in these situations. And they did it with genuine heart. I cared about these characters. I cared about who they are. And I've never wanted a character to live more in an alien film in my entire existence outside of the cat, obviously. I wanted them to live. I felt sorrow when some of them met their end. I cheered multiple times when shit went down. I will not spoil anything in this film. But there are multiple cheering moments where you will, you will eek. You will say Jesus Christ. You will say yay. And you will say, oh, that's a bummer. And it just really invokes emotion out of these kids. I think it's just really well done. It's also expertly directed. The first 10 minutes. If it doesn't grip you in 10 minutes, you suck. That's how I feel. It's really good. The visual dynamic of old ships with CRTs. All the screens are CRTs and all the buttons are square with pointy corners and they're chunky and all the doors are chunky. And the door systems also have that like weighty Feel to them. One of the doors, the way it opens, it's not a handle. It's like a lever that you have to push up multiple times. Like shunk, Shunk, shunk.

[Mike Mahardy]

To open door. Is it like airlock involved with it? Pressurization?

[Mary Kish Woo]

I don't know. I don't know. They didn't explain it, but I was like, that's sick. Door, you know, and like that happens a lot in this film does.

[Mike Mahardy]

Is that like an Chekhov's gun situation where you see someone open the door normally like that, and then at some point later they're being chased by the alien and they have to do that and it's tense. It's got to be to be clear. It just seems like something they would do.

[Mary Kish Woo]

There's really good foreshadowing. I have to be very careful because one of the best foreshadowing is a character who reveals character stuff. And you're like, that's gonna come up. And it absolutely. The fuck does. There's also items in the film. This is very indicative, exactly what you're saying, Mike. Very indicative of horror films where they'll be like, wow, what a cool device. You see, it does this and then you're like, well, that's. That's gonna be important later. And it is.

[Mike Mahardy]

They have like, Bond gets the gadget early on from Q and he's like, you probably won't need it, but this ink is actually poisonous and will blind someone if you press it just like this.

[Mary Kish Woo]

There's. There's multiple. There's only one instance where I feel like they brought something up and that just never came back again. Which is a bit odd when any film does that. But maybe it's a red herring. I don't. I don't know. I'm not an expert filmmaker. The lighting is fucking incredible. You know, in old sci fi ships where they got the spinning lights, the wee woo situation to just increase the tension. I think they do it incredibly well. It is not glaring, but it is frightening. And the. I'm gonna. Unfortunately, I don't have my alien lingo, but the crawly Face hugger.

[Jake Decker]

Face hugger.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Face huggers. Okay. Is that their actual name or is that just. We call them.

[Mike Mahardy]

I think that's their, like, colloquial name. I'm not. I think it's just like xenomorph fetus, but I think I'll look it up.

[Jake Decker]

Don't they refer to him as face huggers?

[Mike Mahardy]

The movies definitely do. That's like what the humans call them. I'M not sure if, like, the scientists have. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mary Kish Woo]

The face huggers do exactly what you expect them to do. There's multiple of them. This is in the trailer, so I don't consider this a spoiler. There's like, dozens. And that's really exciting because you're. You're dealing with an absurd amount of something where even one is extremely terrifying. And so to have that many is.

[Mike Mahardy]

They're really, really enjoyable. I mean, they're one of the scariest, like, things, monsters created in a movie. They. The facehugger is infinitely more terrifying than the xenomorph.

[Mary Kish Woo]

That's how I feel.

[Mike Mahardy]

I would rather. I would actually rather fight a xenomorph and get torn apart than see in a face because it'd be skittering toward me on the ground.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yeah. You don't want to get impregnated. Which is, like, one of the original things that it was kind of the inspiration behind. Oh, yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

That whole. Yeah. The whole movie is, like, playing on the fear of rape, basically.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yes.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Of men. Right. Like, of. Well, because anyone can have it now. Right? Like, we're all. We're all up for grabs. We're at the bottom of the. That's why I sleep like this food chain. I wear an eye mask on my mouth just to be safe. I don't want spiders getting in there.

[Mike Mahardy]

I suck. I just suck on a binky. All.

[Jake Decker]

I mean, that'll stop him.

[Mike Mahardy]

No, I just. I do that because my wife likes it. But face suckers are horrifying. And I.

[Mary Kish Woo]

They are.

[Mike Mahardy]

I want to see Romulus very badly. I am one of those weirdos who actually liked Covenant. I know I'm in the minority, but I enjoyed it. I don't think it was the best thing to ever happen. I definitely. The first movie is my favorite by far.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I thought Covenant was okay. And Prometheus.

[Mike Mahardy]

I was like.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I did not like Prometheus.

[Mike Mahardy]

I was born.

[Mary Kish Woo]

My problem with Prometheus was it was like, we're gonna try and explain how life itself is created. And it's just like, bud, that's not what we're here for. We are here for the deaths of people and to watch them not suffer. But we're going to figure out who can actually survive in this life or death scenario with a supreme being. That's why we're here. I think that Romulus knows its audience. It's saying, you're here to watch some people live and some people die. Or some. All people die. Who's to say? But the point is, is like, you're going to watch them in these life or death situations against an ultimate, very smart being. And it's really cool to watch the evolution of the creature. We already know some of the things, so they. They do nice little advances on what you. Your expectations are of the alien. And again, I'll be very careful to avoid spoilers, but they did enough where, you know, the sequel, Aliens, they were like, what if there were multiple aliens? And like, that's what's scary about it. This movie goes a little further. It found another way for us to be scared. And I think that's quite ingenious. I think it was a really nice twist. It's not hokey. I think it's a great evolution of the series. And it's not just because there's more of the thing.

[Mike Mahardy]

What's it like? God, Ridley Scott's, like, directorial career is so fucking fascinating.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

You can look. How many movies is directed movement a lot? 5, 6, 7, 8.

[Mary Kish Woo]

A lot.

[Jake Decker]

A lot. Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

2, 3, 3. 24, 25, 26, 27, 28. With Gladiator 2 coming up, that'll be 29. And I would say 50% of them are not bad movie or no. 50% of them are bad movies. Like, bad. But then he's also made Blade Runner. He's made Alien. He did Blackhawk Down, Thelma and Louise the Martian. I guess you could say I couldn't. I don't. The last time I watched a movie by him that I liked was Alien, Covenant. I could not stand House of Gucci. Granted, I haven't seen Napoleon yet.

[Jake Decker]

I mean, I heard Napoleon's pretty tough to get through.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I heard that too. Even the trailer, I think, was, like, very odd. I didn't see it either because the trailer was, like, one of the most famous, like I scenes, but it was just taken completely out of context. It felt like it was not accurate or even pretending to be accurate. I understand that history movies are often playing with reality, but at some point I was just like, you guys are just not even trying.

[Jake Decker]

What's about my favorite thing to come out of that movie, though? I think during an interview, someone asked Ridley Scott, like, I hear the French people don't like this movie too much. What's your response? Like, well, the French people don't even like themselves. And then that was it.

[Mike Mahardy]

He. I actually rewatched Gladiator recently, and for, like, all of the hype that movie has gotten over the years. And as much as it's been, like, memed to death, it's still pretty good.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

And it's funny, I always think he's Master and Commander before I have to remind myself that was Daniel no Offski. What the hell is his name? Black Swan. Mother.

[Jake Decker]

Darren Aronofsky.

[Mike Mahardy]

Darren Aronofsky? Yeah. He was Mastering Commander.

[Jake Decker]

Darren Aronofsky did Master and Commander.

[Mike Mahardy]

No, he did Noah. Who didn't? Master and Commander. They're both ships during storms.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, there you go. I don't know who did, Matt. Oh, wait, I feel like I should know who did that.

[Mike Mahardy]

Mastering Commander was.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I'm not even trying.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, I'm not Googling. Mike's clearly Googling.

[Mike Mahardy]

I'm not gonna go directed by Peter Ware.

[Jake Decker]

Okay. Yeah, I wouldn't have known he did Gallipoli.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, he did Gallipoli. Okay. And Dead Poets Society. Was Ridley Scott connected to it? Why am I associating Ridley Scott with Master and Commander?

[Jake Decker]

Did he do another boat movie?

[Mike Mahardy]

Probably.

[Jake Decker]

There you go.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, yeah, he did boat the movie.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

But I'm excited to see Romulus. It's funny, the last time I think us three were on a podcast talking about a horror movie was Dead Air. The podcast we did about horror? Yeah. Gamespot. Those episodes are probably still somewhere. I don't think we put them on. We weren't publishing on, like, Spotify or anything back then. I think we had that, like, embedded, like, SoundCloud player back that we put in Gamespot Stories.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Maybe it is on my fears. Is that a lot of my favorite memories and some of my straight up, like, hey, I put that in my reel. That is a part of my history is in GameSpot's YouTube channel. And if GameSpot ever, for whatever reason was like, I'm nuking it, I would lose so much of my history. I don't think they would. But it is something, I think about.

[Mike Mahardy]

Game Informer articles are gone right now. That one land.

[Jake Decker]

I was going to say, like, Game Informer, folks. I mean, anyone who's written there, right? Like, a bunch of your stuff is gone now.

[Mary Kish Woo]

No proof now. Yeah.

[Jake Decker]

Did they. Did they Nuke Game Informer's YouTube channel, though? Or is that still there?

[Mike Mahardy]

I don't know.

[Jake Decker]

I think it might still be there, but I could be wrong. I know they shut down everything. Yeah, I think about that, too. I mean, I've had reviews and articles and features and all sorts of stuff that was written for smaller websites that just don't exist anymore. Because the guy who was paying for it was like, I'm not paying for it anymore. And then it Just went up in flames.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It's like, all right, that's so crazy because that's just so important. The history of it is important. Right. And we're just not preserving that work. I think I just have a fondness for that. It makes me want to hoard digitally at least anything I've ever touched. Because a lot of my old, old, old videos are. The only place I can find them is on, like, a Vimeo channel from, like, 2008. And I think that's sad that I had to, like, make sure that I had my own shit, because now if I didn't do it that way, it would have been gone.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's scary. Polygon stuff. All my Polygon stuff still up. It looks different lately, but it's still there.

[Mary Kish Woo]

My Stardew Valley review was re reviewed, and now, like, it's kind of like my original review is gone, which I think is a bummer because I reviewed the game.

[Jake Decker]

It's your reviews on Gamespot anymore.

[Mary Kish Woo]

There's a new review. They, like, updated it.

[Mike Mahardy]

Wait, they replaced O to keep the URL authority or the SEO authority. They just.

[Jake Decker]

I feel like also, Mary, when you reviewed it, that was at launch. And now, like, Stardew Valley is so different than it was back then. I mean, not so different, but they've added so much more to it.

[Mike Mahardy]

We did that at Polygon, but I. I don't. We didn't. We wrote a new review. Are you saying they replace yours literally, on. On the, like, the same URL? Are you saying it's been superseded?

[Jake Decker]

In general, I still see it. Oh, yeah, I still see your review, Mary. A9.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It's not like, nuked, I think it's just. It's not the review when you look at the review anymore. Right. Like, now it's like, this is the updated review, which makes more sense because mine's outdated. This isn't about a wrong that Gamespot did to me. This is about me selfishly wanting my review to be first and foremost.

[Jake Decker]

It's all here. It's all here. Your original review.

[Mary Kish Woo]

God damn right it is. And it should.

[Jake Decker]

Should be markish right there.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I wrote it kind of. I mean, I did, but I think Peter, like, had to rewrite a lot of it because I didn't. I don't know how to write. I could barely. I could barely form coherence.

[Mike Mahardy]

You can barely speak.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yeah, I know. It's not my. It's my weakest thing. I think I'm really good in meetings. I think I'm able to Be creative. I think if you just give me a pen and paper and say, write a 300 word essay about what I learned in boat school, I panic and I can't do it. I freak out.

[Jake Decker]

I feel like when someone tells you it's an essay too, it's like, oh, what?

[Mike Mahardy]

You know, I never got grounded when I was younger. My parents, well, my dad specifically would make. Assign me word counts and make me write an essay about what I did wrong. And the word count would be way too high to just say like, I shouldn't have thrown mud at my neighbor. I had to like write a thousand words about like the existential thoughts that crossed my mind, like consequence and punishment, morality.

[Jake Decker]

Do these, do these essays still exist somewhere? No good on a shirt? Who knows?

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, we've seen how that happens. But yeah, it's like, of course I had to start doing these David Foster Wallace digressions in order to fill space. I'm sure my dad got a lot of entertainment out of it. My dad also. I might have talked about this on fire escape before. My dad was pretty creative. Not only did, and apologies to all the five year olds listening, but my parents, when they were still pretending Santa was real. When I was younger, my dad also invented like a whole bureaucracy for the North Pole. So I didn't write letters directly to Santa. He had a. An elf who was like our family's delegate, receive our letters and respond in lieu of like in Santa's place. The elf's name was Fleegle. And my dad was just wrote in character as this elf until I was like however many years old I was when I found out Santa was fake.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Classic Fleegle.

[Mike Mahardy]

I haven't believed anything since then at all.

[Jake Decker]

What do you think about the earth? Is it round or flat?

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, dude, I don't. I can't believe either one. That's how bereft of belief.

[Jake Decker]

Damn. So then what is it?

[Mike Mahardy]

It's. I just don't believe Earth.

[Jake Decker]

Okay. Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. I don't. Yeah, it's crazy. I can't even believe like Mary. What's your name?

[Mary Kish Woo]

Fleegle.

[Mike Mahardy]

I don't believe you. It's not happening.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It's my God given name.

[Mike Mahardy]

Thank Fred Mahardi for that.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Before I was a sandwich artist at Subway, I actually streamlined as a writer for Santa and responded to children just so that the parents didn't have to.

[Mike Mahardy]

In what capacity?

[Mary Kish Woo]

Parents hired me to respond to a.

[Mike Mahardy]

School or like a neighborhood. Hired you?

[Mary Kish Woo]

Any, Any. Any that didn't want.

[Jake Decker]

Can you give us a sample of like what you would have said wait.

[Mike Mahardy]

So. Yeah. Oh, wait, sorry, really? Before you go into specifics, I'm. This is curious because that's kind of like instead of mowing neighbors lawns, you responded to their kids as Santa for money.

[Jake Decker]

I think she's making this up, Mike.

[Mike Mahardy]

Because that's like a. That would make a sick movie.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It's not a bad way to make.

[Mike Mahardy]

A buck for like parents who are.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Terrible at writing and just hate their children.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna dig into this deeper.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Uh huh. I'm ready.

[Mike Mahardy]

Wait, let's improv one. Dear Santa, this is Caroline. This summer or winter or Christmas. Sorry, I'm really stupid and young.

[Jake Decker]

Kid's an idiot.

[Mike Mahardy]

I'm an idiot. I got straight F's in in school. I punched Timmy Wiggins in the crotch. I took. I clogged the principal's toilet on purpose with Silly Putty. But I would also like a pony. Love Caroline. Smooches Caroline.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Dearest Caroline, your behavior has caused us to purchase the pony and starve it to death out in the fields. Attached you will see a piece of fur from its hide. May this remind you to not put putty in the toilets, to be respectful of your parents and to get at least Cs, which as we know, is the standard for all children to receive gifts. D, as we know, is no gift. And F is, we will kill your gift. Tommy Higgins is my best bro. I'm sending him gold nuggets. Eat shit, Flaggin.

[Mike Mahardy]

Dear Flagon, surprise, bucko. I love my bloated farty rotting carcass of a horse. I sleep with him every night. My parents hate the smell, but I refuse to let them get rid of it. And every time they come near me, I say, I'm the fucking lizard queen. Call me Caroline. This is my bloating, rotting farty carcass of a horse. And I've named him Gretchen. So take that, Flagon. I'll find you and I'll kill you and I love you and goodbye.

[Mary Kish Woo]

This is just you and me in different forms.

[Mike Mahardy]

You're right.

[Mary Kish Woo]

You are Caroline and I. There's money to be made. We should really dial 9.1and then find out where Caroline is and dial 1 again because that's a psychotic child.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I mean also bad parents who just leave a dead horse in her bed.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Well, she had it coming.

[Mike Mahardy]

Jake, what have you been up to lately? Last time. Yeah, you were on the show with Vinny and I. I forget what was going on then and when that episode was. But you haven't been on for a bit, share new stuff, any news, exciting stuff. It can't be boring stuff.

[Jake Decker]

Can't be boring. No, it's gonna be boring because I've been stuck at home. My partner broke her ankle, so I haven't been able to leave in. Apart from minor things. Running errands, getting groceries, that sort of thing.

[Mike Mahardy]

Like in solidarity or. Oh, like taking care of your partner.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, I guess I did go to Tennocon recently. Yeah. Last time I was at Tennocon was with you, Mikey.

[Mary Kish Woo]

And we shot Tennocon.

[Jake Decker]

Tennocon is Warframes convention. Warframe and Soul Frames now. Yeah, Yeah, I was there. We were shooting in a little glamorous London, Ontario. Yeah, we're shooting some vids over there, which none of which have gone up yet. It'll probably be a while before they do. But yeah, it was kind of interesting going back because not much has changed with the Warframe community. But at the same time, it felt very different. And also, London was exactly as I remember it. Even that little pub across the street from the hotel that we went to. Mike. Yeah, still there. Super cheap.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's a cool thing. It reminds me of. It might as well be Syracuse. It reminds me a lot of where I grew up. What are you. What were you shooting? Can you talk about it? Like. Like more documentary style stuff or.

[Jake Decker]

I don't know how much I can say yet. But yeah, it was. It was like documentary style stuff.

[Mike Mahardy]

Is it gonna be better than the one I wrote?

[Jake Decker]

It'll be. It'll be very different. I was thinking.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's a simple question.

[Jake Decker]

It'll probably better. Yeah. Yeah, it'll be better.

[Mike Mahardy]

All right.

[Jake Decker]

No, I was. I was thinking back to that trip. That trip was a lot of fun and doing a lot of the shoots we used to do. Um, and that Warframe one, I think was one of our. One of our best that we did. Um, and that was a tough one. Cause I remember that was just me shooting it. Um, so it was like the two of us. And I'm carrying around two cameras so we can get like two camera setups and trying to do audio at the same time. Um, but yeah, I'm still happy with how that turned out.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Jake Decker]

While we were also like that, it proved people wrong too. You know, people didn't think it would do well. And it did like half a million views. We're like.

[Mike Mahardy]

By people you mean one person that.

[Jake Decker]

Frequently said I wasn't gonna say anything.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, I talk not too secretly about that person a lot. As you have heard on the show? Yeah. Cause I remember, like, the idea was that we would go. I think we were basically trying to finish all the A roll interviews the day they were setting up, which we realized was an inconvenience to them. But we had built up a good relationship with Digital Extremes and Reb and Megan and Steve, et cetera, and they were gracious enough to allow us in while they were setting up onto the floor. So we were trying to get all the interviews basically done the first day, and then we knew we wanted to follow back up with them. Then the last day, they always do the same meetup in a park where, like, they all get together and play magic and just hang out and decompress. That's like, all right, those are the bookends. That's easy. Of course, like, as any video shoot will go, that didn't go according to plan. So we had to adapt. And then I remember we were trying to. What was it we had that. That was like the days when, you know, when we kind of. We had like, a. Not a dictum or anything, or like a directive, but, like, we had bought a few. A drone OR 2 for GameSpot. So we're like, well, let's use them if we can. So I remember we were getting that drone shot inside the arena when they were starting.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

And, like, I don't know that we were actually allowed. Well, I mean, Digital Extremes told us we could. We were fine to do it, but I don't know that, like, the convention center knew about it. I'm sure this is fine to talk about. This was, like, five years ago. But stuff like that, and then finding places to interview them while they were just construction workers putting things together around us. Like, we were in. Rev and I were in beanbags at one point, which lent it a really, like, grassroots feel, which I loved. But while we were shooting it, I was like, this could just be an absolute nightmare to edit. Because by that point, I was definitely helping you edit more. But you were still doing the bulk of editing.

[Jake Decker]

Well, I think we had Max help edit as well, I think, at the time. So, yeah, it was. It's quite the project. But, yeah, like I said, I'm still really happy how that turned out. Even as someone who, like, doesn't give a shit about Warframe and has tried getting into Warframe when. Back when you were trying to get me into it before that trip. And I just. Just did not click with me at all. But I still think, like, the story was there. It was interesting. And I think Digital Extremes is very Honest and open, which always makes for good material. Doesn't matter, like, whether it's for a documentary about games, movies, just any. Just honesty is always, like, what plays best for that. And they're very open. And, you know, like, we've all talked to tons of developers in, like, big studios, right? And a lot of them have been PR trained and you just don't. I don't know, it just always falls kind of flat. Like, it just feels. Feels like they're reading a script and it's never fun.

[Mike Mahardy]

I mean, like, the main thrust of that documentary ended up being, like, how they. How does something that successful that's that dependent on this kind of community not end up resenting the community. Like, I'm sure any creator in today's, like, on Patreon or YouTube can kind of attest. So, like, it was the fact that Steve. It was Steve Sinclair, who was the creative director of Warframe at the time and now is the creative director of the upcoming Soul Frame. Before he passed the torch to Reb Ford to be creative director of Warframe, he was like, oh, yeah, it's tough sometimes, like, because, like, you give them new content and of course they just want more and they want it to be better. It's a hungry monster to feed. And, like, the original name of the documentary was Feeding the Monster, which I think was a very compelling name. And the actual documentary in the video was still called that on our title screen. But of course, a certain someone wanted us to change the name on YouTube. And, like, to their credit, I guess the video did do well. And the. The title, I will admit, on YouTube now is more, like, broad enough to draw more people in. Like, people like you who might not. Jake, you were saying, like, might not really play the game. But the artistic sensibilities in me wanted it to be the other title. I was probably wrong in this case. But, yeah, I like that video a lot. I still. I still like the past couple jobs I've gotten. I put that, like, in my reel, even if it wasn't for a video position. It's good. I have, like, I can't go back to Warframe because I know I'll play too much of it. I've missed the last, like, eight new frames.

[Jake Decker]

The new 1999 does seem kind of cool. But, yeah, it's like, here's how you got to do it. You got to complete this and this, and then you got to get to this point and then do this. And then it's like. And they're like, it's like, three hours of content. And I was like, oh, man, I'm not doing that.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I mean, anytime you want to get, like, do, like, the new war kind of storyline, it's. Oh, yeah. Like, once you've done, like, 40 hours and you've gotten, you know, you've unlocked the whole star map and you've gotten this feature, and then you can. You can cross correlate these abilities and whatnot. I was all in on it, but, yeah, I mean, Destiny players, any MMO players can probably sympathize, empathize, rather. But anyway, glad Tennocon was fun. We'll be.

[Mary Kish Woo]

At least we started talking about playing video games.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I know. Yeah. Do you want. Do you want to talk about new games we played?

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yeah.

[Jake Decker]

No.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Turn your light on.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, I was gonna. I can't turn my light on and get a beer.

[Mary Kish Woo]

You look like Edward James almost. Who's that guy you like, the Watergate guy who's like Deep Throat hiding behind it?

[Mike Mahardy]

No, you always bring him up.

[Mary Kish Woo]

No, I don't. I'm tongue him out. Jesus. I'm talking about the guy who spilled the beans on Watergate. Deep Throat.

[Mike Mahardy]

I just said that.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Who? I didn't hear that.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, yeah, I said Deep Throat.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I thought you were just talking about you.

[Mike Mahardy]

No, that is my nickname, though. Okay, now let's talk about video games.

[Mary Kish Woo]

No break.

[Jake Decker]

No, I gotta get beer.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, Jake's getting beer.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I said no break. I said no on Sunday. I was like, that's so weird. My hip hurts. And I was like, I must have slept in the bed weird. And so I slept on my other side. And I haven't been able to go running for two days because my hip keeps kind of not popping out, but it's obviously not doing well. And I was like, what the Is causing my hip to be so weird? And I thought maybe it's the way I sit in my chair, because I do. I do sit like a shrimp. So, like, it could be posture, you know?

[Mike Mahardy]

No, I don't. Why do you sit like that?

[Mary Kish Woo]

How do you think shrimp sit? You know what I mean? And it's just like, if you gave them a little tiny business chair. If you gave them a tiny chair, how do you think a shrimp would sit in it? That's how I sit. And I very often I like, raise my. Like, I usually, like, kind of like hug my knees when I'm sitting. Anyway, the point is my posture's ass, and I thought that it was related to that. And then last night, as I was getting ready for bed, I was putting on my Js, and in the mirror, I saw the biggest, blackest welt on my ass right where my hip is. And I was like, what the fuck? Where did that come from? And I obviously got. I fell or someone punched me. And I have no memory of it. I have a huge welt in my. On my butt.

[Jake Decker]

Did Mike do it? Could he.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I don't know.

[Mike Mahardy]

That'd be funny.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I have no memory of this.

[Jake Decker]

Flies all the way to wake up.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. And then this is normal.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I have definitely had bruises before and been like, I don't know where that's from, but this is massive. It's huge. It's on my hip. It's, like, altered my hips. Like, they don't feel good. It's been a. It's been a whole thing.

[Mike Mahardy]

Sorry to hear that. Yeah, I'm just.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Thank you.

[Mike Mahardy]

I just had a sore throat and tomorrow's my last day of antibiotics.

[Mary Kish Woo]

That's nothing. I also. I know we're going to talk about games, but I also tell you guys had this one I went out boating with with Josh because he's got a little boat now. It's like a little tiny sailboat that fits, like, two people, and it's meant for speed, and it's really cool. And he was like, you got to bring your selfie stick. And I was like, no. I have anxiety about bringing my phone on a boat that literally can fall over at any moment. This is not a substantial boat. It can fall over very easily. And I was like, anxiety. A sailboat.

[Mike Mahardy]

Those don't really fall over.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It's called the Quest. If anyone wants to look it up. And it, like, it's small to the point where, like, and light. You can tow it. And it all comes apart fairly easily. We take it apart and put it back together in about 30 minutes that we can sail, and then we take it apart and then, like, he drives home with it.

[Mike Mahardy]

RS Quest. Oh, it's like a sailing style boat. Oh, wow.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yeah, it's substantial, but it's small. Anyway.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, cool.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Like, this is me to bring my selfie stick. He gives me, like, a little wet sack so that I can keep my phone dry. I'm putting my selfie stick on it. I'm getting the best footy you've ever seen, Jake. This is a video for the ages. I'm getting really good footage of the boat, of the sails, of me being cool and, you know, like, that. That old trope on sailboats where it's like, watch out for the Boom. He had to make a quick turn, and the boom knocked my phone into the water, and I lost my iPhone. It sank like a stone. You guys, I'm.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, is that why you DM me saying you lost your phone?

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yes.

[Mike Mahardy]

I thought you lost it. I didn't know. I got knocked out of your hand by the boom on a training sailboat.

[Mary Kish Woo]

And the worst part is, is, like, it's in the wet sack on at the bottom of the Willamette. So it is a functioning phone in a perfectly preserved baggie.

[Mike Mahardy]

Scuba equipment.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It's gone.

[Mike Mahardy]

How deep is the Willamette?

[Mary Kish Woo]

I watched Poseidon steal it from me.

[Mike Mahardy]

How deep is the Willamette River? 40ft, near its mouth, north of downtown port. I could die 40 fe by sleep.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I.

[Mike Mahardy]

You want your phone back?

[Mary Kish Woo]

So sad. Yeah, go.

[Mike Mahardy]

Give me, like, I. Give me 20 bucks and I'll go get it.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I would give you 20 bucks. I was really bummed because, like, you know, phones are actually expensive. I was, like, looking it up, and I was like, holy shit. Like, iPhones are like $1,000.

[Mike Mahardy]

What good is the wet sack?

[Mary Kish Woo]

Expensive.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's going to sink anyway.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Okay, this is my fatal mistake. My fatal mistake.

[Mike Mahardy]

I'm going to call it right now. Wait, is it still powered on?

[Mary Kish Woo]

I don't know.

[Mike Mahardy]

Call it. It's like, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Fucking fish on the other end.

[Mike Mahardy]

I want to FaceTime your phone, see if, like, a sea creature.

[Mary Kish Woo]

What if down there.

[Mike Mahardy]

What if, like, a sea snake is just like.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It's. It's down there right now. It's just kind of like this devastating thing. Because my fatal flaw was the wet sack that Josh gave me had, like, a band so that you could connect it to maybe, like, your neck or something like that. But I needed to stretch it out past the boat to get the footy. So I took the clip and I attached it to the selfie stick that way. Is it ringing?

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Oh, my God. It still has power.

[Jake Decker]

So it's still powered.

[Mary Kish Woo]

That's so sad.

[Jake Decker]

So that was this weekend?

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yes, it's. That's really sad. The phone is connected to the selfie stick so that if the phone fell out of the selfie stick, it I would still have it. But because the selfie stick got knocked out of my hand, the phone was connected to the selfie stick, and they both sank to the bottom of the Willamette.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, the boom swings quickly.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I know it's thousand dollar whoopsie. It's very funny, but I was sad about it. And then we both poured out A beer.

[Mike Mahardy]

In the room.

[Jake Decker]

No one's ever gonna see that footage.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It's gone, you guys. The footage was so awesome.

[Jake Decker]

You'll have to get a new one and try again.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I'm never doing that again. And I looked at Josh, too, because, you know, it's like one of those things where it's like, obviously, it's my fault. I should have kept. I should have. I should have held onto that phone, should have held onto that selfie stick. I should have connected it with a piece of string to my ankle, whatever the fuck I needed to do. It was my fault. And I look at him and I go, oh, bring your selfie stick. Oh, like, let's get sick footy on the boat. He was just like, not my fault. I was like, I know. I know. It's my fault. Was just trying. Trying to point the blame anywhere else. They felt so bad about it.

[Mike Mahardy]

I just imagine you like, hey, we're here on the Willamette. I'm Mary. This is Josh. We're going super fast. Oh, shit. And then. Was it.

[Jake Decker]

Was it recording when this happened?

[Mary Kish Woo]

I don't know. I don't think so. And the reason I don't think so is because it's so funny.

[Mike Mahardy]

If we could recover it somehow.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Dude, I wish I could recover that footy because it's really good. And it would be the only justifiable thing to Losing my phone, would be like, well, I have this really cool footage. It was worth the error that I had, but it's not worth it. Nothing was worth what happened. I lost. I'm grateful that my phone backs up my photos, so I didn't lose the photos of, like, my dad's 70th, which I think would have made me cry, but, like, I had everything backed up digitally except for the. The videos that I took on that boat. So I lost all my sick boat photos and videos.

[Jake Decker]

Do you have a. Do you have Find my iPhone enabled?

[Mary Kish Woo]

What do you want me to do? Be like, it's at the willow. Yeah.

[Jake Decker]

Then Mike can get it. Mike's. Mike's a diver. Mike said he took diving lessons. You know the exact spot in the. In the lake.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I could point to it from the river edge.

[Mike Mahardy]

That'd be fun. I could find all kinds of things down there. It'd be like the sunny episode by a boat. It's like, there must have been some sort of civil revolutionary war horse massacre. What the hell happened down there? What have you been playing? I've been playing Yellow Taxi Goes Broom.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Didn't miss a beat.

[Mike Mahardy]

We really should have like banked up a lot of embarrassing things he said for when he's not here.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, mentally. Mentally note those. And I'll. I'll put them in my. My soundboard.

[Mike Mahardy]

I don't know that you need to comb through episodes to find dumb things.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, probably not just.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Just go to any random.

[Mike Mahardy]

The waveform when it gets really loud. I played Steamroll Quest 2 after talking about it last episode and how much.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Let's talk about.

[Mike Mahardy]

Sorry, not Steamroll Quest 2. Steamrolled Heist Steamroll game. Yeah, I like it a bunch. I like the first one. As we talked about last time. Used to be image Inform. Now it's Thunderfall games. They just make a bunch of different kind of games from a bunch of different genres set in the same steampunk kind of cartoony universe. But yes, SteamWorld Heist 2. I really like how they fleshed out that. Like that second layer above the actual battles. When you're. You're building out the submarine, you're traveling through the world, you're actually getting into these kind of like naval light battles against other ships. That stuff's really fun and that's compelling. I also really enjoyed the class flexibility between characters. Your class is based on your weapon or the weapon the character is using. So you can just swap weapons out and then you spend these things called cogs to carry over abilities from previous class and you could switch between them any time. So you could go with. Once you build out your crew, you could have four characters and each of them are using the submachine guns, which makes them all reapers. Which anytime you kill a character, you then get a second follow up shot to try to kill another one. Which is all to say that the actual class progression and synergy are really clever. In that game I consistently actually I'm very much a person who in RPGs when you get the ability to multi class, it kind of makes me anxious. I want to just keep that character in the category that I know them as and I want to keep them being the healer. I don't want to around with them also being kind of a DPS in this game. I'm actually like, all right, I'll. I'll give my sniper who I have equipped with all this sniper equipment. I will give her the shotgun so she could be a flanker just for this mission. And then the abilities I get from ranking up her flanker tree can then benefit when I go back to sniper with her because then she can move farther or get extra movement on a turn. Et cetera. So yeah, it's a. It's for as like. I don't know if you'd agree, Mary. Jake, have you played Seymour Highs too?

[Jake Decker]

No. I don't even know what kind of game this is.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, sorry.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Turn based.

[Mike Mahardy]

Figured you played it. Yeah, it's like XCOM esque 2 2D. You the first game was you are boarding these sci fi like outer ships in outer space and you are just going aboard these pirate vessels and naval vessels to rob them. And then I honestly forget what the strategy layer was in that game. You're building up a crew, you're going on different missions, you're outfitting them, ranking them up. It was definitely X Com inspired this one. However, your actual. It's back in like water. So you're more like pirate pirates. And one layer is those missions you're going and you're fighting the Navy, which they're all diesel fueled robots and your steampunk robots, you are robbing them of clean drinking water or fuel for the robots. You're also getting renown in these different parts of this world. But the second layer of the game is this overhead top down of you sailing around islands as this submarine that you're also outfitting the submarine with like broadside machine guns and automatic turrets on top and better boosters and you can dive longer because when you go underwater there' actually this like separate map that you can access secret areas with. So it has that XCOM like half of it is the strategy layer, half it is the actual tactical fights. And I think it works really well. I really don't care about the story. I would actually say the voice acting is actively. It sounds like they couldn't afford a voice actor so one of the developers had to do it all. I don't mean that to be mean. It just strikes me as like it was a very budget voice acting kind of situation. But it doesn't matter. I still. It's one of my favorite games of the year. I'm actively hooked on it. It's a good Steam deck game. Yeah. Mary, I saw you were streaming it and playing it a decent amount as well.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I've put some hours into it. I'm really enjoying the different character classes and how I can. I've gotten a little adjusted. I was curious who your favorite character is because I'm a Sola person through and through. I think Sola's really interesting and super fun to play.

[Mike Mahardy]

Is that the first character you have.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Sniper Sola, is a robot and they have a laser that bounces like 60 times. And so you can like laser everybody in a room and it crushes. And so they're really fun to play. And I also really like playing. It's a lady. I think her name is like, oh. Cause it's a joke off of Judi Dench. It's Judi Wrench. And she has a really fun additional skill. Jake. I think this one's really fun. It's just berate someone verbally for three health remove and you don't have to even be able to see them. So like, in theory, she's just basically like shouting insults. You little bitch. I'll fucking wreck you, you fucking loser. Nobody likes you. And then they just.

[Mike Mahardy]

They just spirit round of Charlie McDonald.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It's so funny. So it's really enjoyable to use these different character classes to your advantage and say, like, I'm gonna bring Judy Wrench for sure because she just mouths people to death, which is hilarious. And soulless with their laser and solas also can build defense in front of them, which is really cool.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh yeah, well, that's the. That's. Yeah, that's from the engineer class from using a. Equipping a pistol. So like you could give a pistol to Judy Wrench and she would have the engineer ability to build.

[Mary Kish Woo]

To build defense.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. And engineers, when you rank them up, they also get. You can. You can give them med kits and then they can use those for free. And it doesn't cost in action. So they can also become your medic support class.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I need a medic. I keep losing people. I will say, like, so I'm not really versed in turn based and it. It tends to be my downfall. That and games where you're only supposed to be sneaky. Yeah, those are like ones where I'm like, I'm not gonna be very good at these.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. This game usually flex.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I usually don't read all the details. And when they tell me like there's like 80 different things that I could choose, I'm like, whatever. I choose the first one. So, yeah, kind of ham fisting my way through this game, but I am getting decently far. It's not super difficult, but it's not easy either. What I really like is that you can change the difficulty at a moment's notice and there's no punishment for losing. So if I take three people out on a skirmish and they all die, I do not lose them permanently. I do not take any hits. I don't lose anything.

[Mike Mahardy]

You just don't get experience. Right. Or maybe you get a Little bit, I think.

[Mary Kish Woo]

So I lost the hours that I spent trying. But you know, there's no aggressive punishment for being bad at the game, which gives me the flexibility to feel like I can try and enjoy it. And I also really like the naval battles, Mike. Like I, I think that's a refreshing break from turn based actions which I, I think could get a little exhausting. But it is very nice to be like, I just finished a long 40 minute turn based battle and now I'm gonna run around with my ship and just shoot people in real time. And that's fun. So they did a good job with the balance of this game. I do think it's very highly polished visually. Mechanically. The audio is very good except for the voice acting, I guess. But like, I think the music is really good. I'm really liking this game and I do recommend it. I think it's worth playing. I've never played a Steam world game before and someone told me that one of them is a Metroidvania and I was like, should I play that?

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, Steamworld Dick.

[Jake Decker]

Isn't. Isn't their whole thing like they just take Steamworld and then just play to a bunch of different genres. So I've played Quest I think, and that was sort of like a turn based RPG deck building rpg. Yeah, yeah. It was so long ago though, I don't really remember it. But I've always heard good things about Heist and I think gamespots review gave it like a nine, the new one.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Thanks. Steamworld Dig is really highly reviewed as well.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, you haven't played Dig, Mary, you'd like Dig even more than Heist too.

[Mary Kish Woo]

And you guys know I love, I love Metroidvania. So like I feel like I should play this.

[Mike Mahardy]

Wait, no, sorry. Steamworld. There are two Steamroll digs, I believe.

[Jake Decker]

Well, because one is like a mine, not Minecraft. But isn't there one? It's like you just dig like it's not really a Metroidvania.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, almost Minecraft. It's more. Almost Stardew Light kind of. It's more resource gathering and farming, et cetera. SteamWorld Dig 2, I believe is the one that went much more Metroidvania and that's a really good game. The most recent One before Steamrolled Heist 2 was Steamroll Build, which is when you're digging for resources, but then it's also a city builder on top of it. I have not played since early access. I. It. It was early access, so take this with a grain of salt. I Did not love it. It felt like city building was the first genre they tried to tackle that they were not great at. But maybe they flesh it out since.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Well, they can't be good at everything. I was actually it's kind of crazy that they really good turn based and they made a really good Metroidvania. Metroidvania. And they've made a really good city builder. Like you have to be shit at one of them.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, they're like small scale blizzards. Like every genre they tackle.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It's just I guess you can make those so inspiring. This company is really cool. This like dev team and did you see that the dev team is also the same team that publishes it. Like they're just this unit, this absolute chunky unit that can do it all. They're like, yeah, whatever. We'll do all the genres, we'll do all the voice acting ourselves with Gary. We'll publish it ourselves. We don't need fucking anybody. Like how big is this company?

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. Thunder Full games previous I believe it's just one to one previously image in form. Let me look that up to.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, I remember Image Inform definitely published like Steamworld Quest or developed and published it. So I don't know when they changed because isn't there another publishing like indie publishing called Thunderful or something?

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, Thunderfall Group is the publisher. Thunderfall Games incorporating the former Thunderfall had been found in 2017 incorporating image and form and Zoink. So yeah, I believe it's, it's, it's like a small merger. But yeah, I mean they're, they made a sequel to a game that Image Inform made so they're continuing their legacy. But yeah, it's there I, we started. I don't know if it was for reboot or what. No, it wouldn't have been for reboot. Yeah. Cause I was at the GameSpot New York office and I think we were still, we had, I don't think we had been doing reboot by then, but we were still doing like video essays together every once in a while. Jake. But I remember playing Steamworld Quest and I had a video that we were like a video essay about just how agile they've been.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that's how I played it. That sounds familiar. I think that's how I know a lot of. Not a lot, but I think that's how I know what I do know about them is from that video.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I, I, it's also just a great Steam deck game. I believe it's also on Switch So I mean like if people are looking for a very good handheld game, $30. Well worth it. It's. It's very fun. I. I like as opposed to XCOM 2 similar or no actually as opposed to what the hell Mario plus Rabbids, Kingdom Battle and whatever the hell. The second game was called A game which I liked very much. That just the subtitle escapes me. In those games you have those like percentages that to hit but it's like it's. It tells you how much damage you're going to do. So it's not a percentage. Like yes, you. You will hit them if you shoot this or no you won't. They're behind double cover. XCOM has the infamous percentages steamroll heist 2 for those who haven't played the first one. You get like a laser sight from a 2D perspective and you're basically just trying to aim that at enemies faces from across the room. And you could pan with the right analog stick. Not every character's gun, some of them like the pistol unless you get an upgrade will just be like two feet worth of a laser sight. And then you kind of have to line it up by. By estimating snipers will the laser sight goes across the whole room. And then it's also worth noting that because these are in confined spaces, there's ricochet involved. So you can like billiard bank your bullet off a ceiling above robots if they're behind cover. So I like that there's some skill and like alignment involved where XCOM 2 might maybe my favorite game ever made. The percentages don't. It's less about, you know, lining up a shirt. I mean there's skill involved for sure but it's. Everybody's seen that like 95% shot that missed and that was frustrating as hell. Whereas Steamworld if you miss, technically it's your fault.

[Jake Decker]

Your fault.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, yeah. But no, that's cool.

[Jake Decker]

I like that there's sort of a tactile aspect to the aiming I think that I don't know for me would make it not more engaging to be honest.

[Mike Mahardy]

You should check it out. I actually. I also think the mission design is really good about keeping you on your feet. One mission will be an alarm just sounded. So you have to survive for the eight rounds of alarm. And you're trying to like balance getting your characters into a defensible position. But you also want to still try to kill enemies each round because if you don't kill the two that just came in on the last alarm, two more are going to come. It just gets harder and harder. Others it's like you have to get to. Because again it's still. You're very much your pirates and you're like you're robbing the Navy. It's like you got to get to this loot, this timed loot box before it explodes or whatever. So then you're similar to the XCOM 2 missions where you're going to save a or hack a computer before it explodes. Like you really have to move quickly. So it's like move quickly but do it very, very slowly. Yeah. In some missions it's like you can only take one person on it. Others it's four. I have not gotten to a point where it gets past four yet. Maybe you can increase your squad size to five. So far I'm still at four. But yeah, I mean the map, the map is also like it's not the best looking game ever. It's kind of. I don't know if you played Monster Train. It's that kind of. I'm not even sure how to describe it. Sort of hand. Like cheaply hand drawn but they ring a lot out of that stone here. So the like more tropical Caribbean looking map at the beginning is pretty good. Like but then you get to a part where you're in Arctica which is. Then it becomes like more polar ice caps and barren Arctic deserts off the water. Yeah. Great game. I can't say enough good things about it. Everybody should. If you're into turn based games at all or you just didn't need a good Steam deck or Switch game, I think it's well worth checking out. It's $30. It's well worth. In my opinion. I would have paid 60 for this.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I agree. I think it's fantastic and absolutely worth playing. Jake, what have you been playing?

[Jake Decker]

I've been playing a game called Natsumon 20th Century Kid.

[Mary Kish Woo]

What the fuck?

[Jake Decker]

Yeah. Have you heard of this Mike? You're nodding.

[Mike Mahardy]

Isn't that like a huge thing in Japan that has not come over this way until now for a while?

[Jake Decker]

Yeah. So I think the series has been around for a very long time but I think this is the first one to make it over to the United States. Basically the whole premise of. I think all these games, this one in particular you play as a little kid in a rural Japanese town during summer break and you have 30 days to just spend it however you want. You can catch bugs, you can. You can go fishing. There's a bunch of little quests that you can do. It's it's really interesting. It. It reminds me of being a kid in a weird way, because it takes place at the turn of the century, like 1999. Um, and I think the kid's supposed to be like eight or whatever. And it's very innocent. It's very simple. Uh, it definitely has some PS2. Gives us some PS2 energy. Um, it doesn't always look great, doesn't run great. Camera's not great. You know, there's some.

[Mike Mahardy]

Are you on Switch?

[Jake Decker]

There's some issues with it. Yeah, I'm playing on Switch. I think it's on PC too. It's probably better if you play on PC.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It's on Steam. I'm looking at it.

[Jake Decker]

Um, yeah, it's probably. Probably a safer bet on Steam, but. Yeah, I had known very little about the series, but I saw this was the first one to make it to the United States and I was like, I should try this. And I'm really liking it. It's interesting. It borrows a lot from Breath of the Wild in a weird way. I don't want to compare it to Breath of the Wild, necessarily. It doesn't have the combat, doesn't have that sense of discovery, at least in the same way. But there's a climbing mechanic that is very similar to what you'd in Breath of the Wild.

[Mike Mahardy]

Like climb anything or.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, you can climb anything. There's stamina that you improve by completing quests. And the quests are always just like, the lighthouse owner is sad. Go cheer him up. And you go talk to him and he's like, oh, the lens is dirty. Can you clean it for me? And then you climb to the top of the lighthouse, clean it. Just things like that. It's very simple. It's very interesting. The localization is pretty rough, but I almost think that kind of adds to the charm, where a lot of the translations don't quite mean a whole lot in English. Some of them just flat out don't make sense. But like I said, I think it kind of adds to the charm.

[Mike Mahardy]

Cool.

[Mary Kish Woo]

This looks actually pretty cute.

[Jake Decker]

Like I said, it is buggy. It doesn't run great. I don't know if it's a merry.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Game, but it's got so many minigames and I love minigames.

[Jake Decker]

It does have a lot of mini games. There is, I wouldn't say a lot of text to read, but there is a good amount, I would say.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Where is it on the Dewey talky scale?

[Jake Decker]

I would say it leans more to Dewey than talky, but there's Definitely talky there. And I think that talkie is pretty structured. Right? Like, each morning there's a conversation that usually happens, that progresses the story, and each night there's one. So, like, usually you get this chunk in between where you can just kind of explore, do whatever you want.

[Mary Kish Woo]

What if I don't want to do the story? What if I only want to catch bugs for 30 days? Am I allowed to do that?

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, you can skip all the cutscenes. I think you can skip most of the cutscenes. You just get.

[Mary Kish Woo]

But can I do the activities that I want to do?

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, you don't have to buy like a bug, like a bug net or a fishing rod or a pickaxe. You just have them. So, like, right from the beginning, you can just go to a pond and start fishing, or you can start catching bugs. And I think one of probably the most endearing things about it is the main character has a little journal. So every bug he catches, he, like, draws a little sketch in the journal. And you can, like, there's like a couple options of how you want to fill in that journal entry with dialogue, like, or with text. That's like, I caught this bug today. Apparently it's rare. Or there's a longer version, but they. They're clearly drawn by a little kid. You know, it's like crayon and they're scribbled together and it's not. It's not great. It's very. I think it's got a lot of heart. It's got a lot of heart, but it is. I don't think it's going to knock anyone socks off, maybe. Unless that's the kind of thing you're looking for.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Intrigued? Yeah. I like stuff like this generally. Just more worried about, like, how dewy it is. But if you think it's dewy enough. I think this is something that, like, I. I don't know, this kind of appeals to me. I love where it's like, hey, any day you don't really know what you're gonna do because it's weird. And the screenshots are so wild. Everything's so different. There's a screenshot of doing, like, I don't know, yoga in a group in the middle of the town hall.

[Jake Decker]

And so that's not a mini game. That is like a three minute cutscene of them just doing, oh, you can skip it. I watched it the first time and skip it every time. But I was, like, getting ready because I was like, all right, I gotta, like, move the stick in the circle or whatever. But nope. You can just watch them do yoga for. Or radio. Radio calisthenics or whatever for three minutes every day.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It is sweet. Obviously a sweet little game, but probably for a unique audience. Interesting. I've also been playing. Would you consider this wholesome? I would consider this quite wholesome.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah. I'd say it's. I'd say it's wholesome.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I've also been playing a game that I think is pretty wholesome. Dan actually messaged me from Germany to make sure that I played it, which I think is very sweet. And usually when someone does that, I'm like, I gotta play it. Because they've pushed me to play it. Dan told me to play Fields of Mystery. I downloaded it last night. I've put not that much into it. Maybe like six, seven hours into it so far. But it's very, very, very much like Stardew. Almost too much. But you are new to a town. You get a plot of land that you can farm. You do tasks for the farmers that increase your rank in the town. Right now, my rank is wood. I do not know what the next rank is, so I cannot answer that question.

[Mike Mahardy]

Your rank as wood.

[Mary Kish Woo]

My rank is wood.

[Mike Mahardy]

That sounds like something like Ken from the Barbie movie would say.

[Mary Kish Woo]

My job is farm and my rank is wood. And I am planting tulips to sell them. There's so much commonality. Right. There is a mine. I haven't been able to get into it yet because I haven't unlocked that part yet. There is a sea and some lake space, and I can fish. And there is a fishing minigame. It is not the same fishing mini game. The fishing mini game in Stardew is kind of annoying, right? Like, there's this block, and you have to hit A. To raise the block.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish Woo]

And you have to. You have to kind of tap it to make sure that the block is in the right space. This one is just wait until the fish nibbles your bait. And the second they do, you have, like, half of a second to hit a. To reel them in. And as long as you hit the button at the right time, you get them. I've been doing that a lot. It's interesting. It has more character development, as far as I'm aware, so far, in the sense that every Friday, all the characters meet at the same lodge to hang out. And when I talk to them, they have stories that progress. One night, all the characters were playing D and D. I had other characters that were playing poker and arguing, which was kind of neat. Just like seeing them fight with each other. And one of the characters who was kind of mean to me got too drunk and was like, I like you. That's pretty cool. I assume there's romance, but I haven't unlocked the ability to romance anybody. What I will say about this is, is in Stardew, obviously romance is a huge part of it. You get excited about romancing a character based on their personality. In Mystery, everybody is smoking hot. They are so unbelievably titty bang bang hot that I struggled to pick someone that I was like, that's going to be my focus. Because every time I met a new character I was like, oh shit, they're hot. And there's like this anime style to them. They have a like 8 bit avatar or whatever that makes them look more casual. But when they talk to you, it's a drawing and it's very. What is it called? Like that dad Daddy Dating simulator.

[Mike Mahardy]

Dream Daddy.

[Jake Decker]

Oh, Dream Daddy.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yeah, it's got Dream Daddy all over it where it's just like these people are. They've made them way too hot for this environment. No farmer should look like that. I was helping out a lady make potions. There's also like some kind of magic element going on to this town. And she had titties popping out of her turtleneck. She looked so crazy hot that I was like, I must be the slave to your bath house because she's just unbelievable. And I found myself struggling with giving her gifts that she liked. It's been a bit torturous to me. I don't know what to say. This is definitely for horny kids. Play it. If you liked Stardew and you want to like sweat on some unbelievable good looking people.

[Jake Decker]

I've been, I've been hearing a lot of people talk about this recently and it sounds really good. I just, I noticed it was an Early Access and I, in my head I'm always like, well, I'd rather like. I don't want to burn myself out before it actually comes out. You know, like, I did that, I guess Stardew release, it didn't release in Early Access. But like, I feel like I played Stardew too early. Seeing all the stuff they eventually added to it. I was like, I don't know if I can go back to it. So like, I have my eye on it. I'm just waiting for the right time, I guess.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Usually I also am an Early Access person. The reason I haven't played Hades too is because it's in Early Access and I Prefer to play when they come out. Yeah, this is. Dan recommended it. I couldn't help it. I do really love Stardew, so this is. Is obviously up my alley and something that I'm going to probably continue playing. It's funny I brought up Hades because it's kind of like got the Hades hotness. You know what I mean? You know, everybody was, like, playing Hades. The game is so well done. But you're also like, I can't not talk about how hot these characters are. Mystery is the same. Very well made. Like, this is an adorable game. It does what it's seeking very well. It has a couple deviations from Stardew just to make it not literally the same game. But you're ultimately. Anyone who liked Stardew, you're getting a very parallel experience with this game. But everybody's hot.

[Mike Mahardy]

I just want to play Stardew more. Stardew got so much more going on. I played like six months ago, and I had no idea you had that many different starting areas and rules and modifiers.

[Mary Kish Woo]

The modifiers are crazy. Now when people are, like, sleeping with other people in that game, because that's new to me, is that they show the penetration, too.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, I think it was what update 2.7. That added penetration.

[Mike Mahardy]

Update 6.9.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I think.

[Mike Mahardy]

Here's the twist. We show it. We show all of it. Just Dolph Lundgren out in the fields, farming, comes back, does outrageous sexual experience on his young pupil. I'm doing It's Always Sunny. I'm. It's just clarifying. This isn't a fantasy I have.

[Mary Kish Woo]

This is your fantasy too. No.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, it could be both.

[Mary Kish Woo]

But the sex stuff in Stardew, was that an update or is that where people are modding the game?

[Jake Decker]

I think. Well, I think it depends. Like, I think people mod it in some real weird ways and probably take it much further than the developer probably intended. That said, I'm pretty sure the, like, the whole, like, child raising stuff was like an update. Right? I don't think that was.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yeah, you can legit have babies now in Stardew. Yeah. I don't think they show them they.

[Mike Mahardy]

Want babies in real life.

[Jake Decker]

No, I think they do show the full birth.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I think here's the twist. You have to full crowning. You see everything. You have to cut the umbilical cord. There's a minigame for it.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, there's like, you have to. Anytime they dilate more than 6 inches or whatever it is, you have to use the analog sticks, like your hands.

[Mary Kish Woo]

There's Haptic feedback pain modulator for men's bellies. That you can feel what it's like to have a contraction.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. That'd be a good use for the next switch.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Making.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I've heard there's a thing that lets guys feel what cramps are like. Cramps.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh.

[Jake Decker]

Oh. Like. Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Interesting.

[Mary Kish Woo]

But for your body.

[Mike Mahardy]

I don't want to play that game.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Wouldn't it be nice to just not play?

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. One of the. One of the few times where being a man is easier than being a woman. One of the few instances I should say.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yeah, the one. Jake, is this a joke? Why do you have Hollow Knight on here?

[Jake Decker]

Because I finally played Hollow Knight.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Don't start with me.

[Jake Decker]

I swear I did.

[Mike Mahardy]

You hadn't played it before.

[Jake Decker]

I tried it when it came out in 2017, but I didn't finish it. Not because I didn't enjoy it, but because it was. It came out in 2017 and there. I think it was 2017. Or I played it in 2017 according to Steam, and there was just so much other stuff, so I finally went back and finished it. Going to be honest, partly inspired by Dan a little.

[Mike Mahardy]

Well, Dan never shuts up about that game, and he was trying to sell Mary on it for a while.

[Mary Kish Woo]

And I am a little offended that Dan is what convinced you to play Hollow Knight and not.

[Jake Decker]

I wouldn't say it was Dan who convinced me. A lot of people have been telling me to play Hollow Knight because it's one of their favorite games of all time. I mean, you've said so much about it. One of my good friends, I visited him in Colorado and he was just. All he talked about is Hollow Knight. Loves that game. One of his favorite games. So I came back from that trip and was like, all right, I want to play Hollow Knight. Conveniently, Dan was also playing Hollow Knight, so he finished it well before I did because he had surgery and everything. But I was chipping away at it and turns out people were right. That game's pretty good.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Great. Riveting. Tell us more about, like, what you liked about it since your first playthrough.

[Jake Decker]

No, I'm good. That's it. That's all. That's all I can.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I've been playing Tavern Manager Simulator.

[Jake Decker]

Nice.

[Mike Mahardy]

Is that good?

[Mary Kish Woo]

It's actually fucking great. I don't play a lot of sim games because I don't know. They usually don't grip me. This is Tavern Manager Simulator, the whole thing. I have to say that because I recommended it to a friend and they Googled Tavern Manager and they got a completely different game. So it's Tavern Manager Simulator.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay, I see it.

[Mary Kish Woo]

You are the manager of a tavern in an rpg. It's very funny because you'll see people who are like, you know, they look like they came from like, wow. But they're ordering beers and sausages from you. You have to get everything. You have to order the wheat or whatever for your beer, the hops, and you have to order the sausages. You pour the beers yourself. There's mini games for pouring the beer beer perfectly. If you overpour it now you've spilled on the floor and you have to mop up the floor. There's a clean rating for your tavern and if it gets too dirty, people talk shit about you. So you actually have to like mop the floor, get rid of everybody's like dirty ass footprints. You wash the dishes after people have finished drinking their ale and they give you money for everything that they ordered. And then you use that money to upgrade your tavern, obviously. So I got more tables. I increased the things that I was offering. Originally it was just beer and sausages, but right at this point, I am doing steaks, soups, beers and sausages. I got a lot of different stuff. I have a table for six, which is nuts. And then here's the cool part, because it's set in like an RPG fantasy world, I can employ fairies. So I've hired a fairy to do my dishes, which is like my least favorite task. And I, you know, no, it's just a boring, really monotonous task. So as soon as I was able to hire my first fairy, now they do all my dishes and my dirty work and I get to do the stuff that I like to do, which is usually serving people and kicking out the drunks. It's pretty funny. Like they have said it so that like, some people drink too much. They like ask for four beers and you serve them and then when they're done, they just flop over. But you have to physically pick them up and hurl them out the front of your bar and boot them out. There's also an old lady that comes to the front of your tavern is just talk about you and you get a pan to hit her over the head with it to get her out of your bar, which I think is very funny. People in my toilet and they clog it and I have to unclog my toilet. I don't enjoy that mini game, but I haven't been able to assign a ferry to unclog my toilet. So that one I have to do. I cook my own soup. I cook the steaks. It's all mini games. None of them are extremely hard. This is not a difficult or complicated game. I actually really like playing it while I'm watching a TV show. I've been like watching hacks a lot. I think it's very funny. And I can watch hacks while I play Tavern Simulator. It's not too distracting. So like, if anybody's out there who's like, I just want a casual game that I can like half ass play while I'm like watching TV or sitting on my ass or drinking, this is the one. You do not have to like pay attention. You do have to like function while you're playing this game. But you don't have to think very hard. This is like a casual enjoy pretending to be a tavern wench or wenchman.

[Jake Decker]

My first thought looking at this on Steam is I feel like this would be a lot of fun in VR. Like it's got that job simulator vibe. I don't know if you guys ever played job simulator or whatever. I think they made a couple of work simulator.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I can see.

[Jake Decker]

I feel like that'd be, that'd be a good time.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I think it'd be ideal in VR, especially picking up the drunk and like carrying them outside, hurling their fat asses.

[Jake Decker]

Out, hitting that lady with a pan. With a pan.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Hitting the lady with a pan is funny. So the very first time it happened, I gave her $10 and she goes away if you give her money. And then the second time the game was like, you've unlocked pan. And I was like, oh good, so that I can make the sausages. And they were like, no, use this to beat the shit out of this old lady that's constantly begging in the front of your tavern and get rid of her. I could not believe that that's what they wanted me to use the pan for. But you know, one hit and I couldn't quit. I'll never give her money again. I just beat her ass every time I see her in the tavern. So that's my new system.

[Mike Mahardy]

I might try this out.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I.

[Mike Mahardy]

What's the last like simulator game? No, no, I played Baron Breakfast and I liked a lot of that game. I feel like it took too long to get to the fun points though. I like the actual fact that you're decorating the the inn. But yep, again I think it took to. It didn't get to the actual like compelling rewards quickly enough. I want to get a bit of.

[Mary Kish Woo]

A slow Burn, too. Like, I will prepare you.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's fine. Maybe I'm probably phrasing it wrong. I shouldn't say that. It's that Baron breakfast took too long to get to the interesting bits. I don't think it paced it out. So there's long stretches where I feel like I wasn't doing much at all to improve my place.

[Mary Kish Woo]

But good games should just really dole that out almost every day. So you feel like you're never doing the same thing.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish Woo]

The very first day in this game, you're only pouring beers because you're learning and you're, like, figuring out the rules. I swear by, like, day three, it was like, sausages and beers. By, like, the first week I had soup. I mean, I'm definitely in it at this point. I've been playing for, like, a little bit longer, but I've. I have upgraded my kitchen several times. I have put up cactuses and beautiful wall decorations, and I've upgraded a lot of different components. I've upgraded my bar so that it seats more people. Like, I'm fully in at this point. But I do think that, you know, you're probably gonna have to give it four hours if you want to be able to play and upgrade, like, all the food and stuff like that. But I don't think that's a huge investment. And again, what I would argue is, like, everybody's different. You can play simulation games however you want. But I have found this best on my Steam Deck. Casually playing this while I'm, like, enjoying other media, if that makes sense. This is not like Dodo, where I'm like, this is all I'm doing for the rest of the evening, and I have all my snackies and my drinkies and I'm not leaving my computer. This is a, like, whatever. I will, like, casually play this for hours while I'm also talking with my mom on the phone, which I did do.

[Mike Mahardy]

Mary, what else have you played?

[Mary Kish Woo]

I have also played Dros. It could be Dross. I'm not really sure. I got this key for my switch, so I dusted off my Nintendo Switch, which I have not turned on in a long time because I have a Steam deck now and I. I'm a changed person. But the game Dross is a. I want to say it's like a light puzzler, where you are a person in a knight's uniform, but you are also the goo that is sentient, that helps the person in the night armor. And you solve puzzles either together, where the knight armor can cut things and open big boxes and is strong and heavy, or you are the goo. The goo can jump, it's dexterous, but it's really weak and it can't defend itself. So in a puzzle where it's like, for example, the first area is like a sewer and you're like, okay, I have to get some machine parts. I need to get to the next portal, but I'm not heavy enough to open up the space. So I bring the knight to the. I don't know, it's like a button that you have to stand on to open up a gate. Then I release my goo, my goo crawls around and opens up a different way so that my knight can get there. It's just puzzle based activities. I don't think they're necessarily complicated. Something I found odd is that it's very much based on completion. Get a currency that you spend. If you get attacked and get hurt, you spend the currency to essentially like heal yourself. But you want to have enough currency that you get a check mark at the end of the level. So you don't want to get too hurt. What bothered me about it is, is I want to complete all the boxes, so I want to get all this, the currency, and I want to get the crystal shards and I want to get whatever. The secret thing is that they usually hide something in the level, but then the last one is time. And in a game where it's all about investigating and learning how to solve the puzzle and not taking too much damage and finding all the secrets, it also wants me to do it in under 2 minutes and 30 seconds. So I'm never getting all the boxes ticked because I'm looking for all the secrets, which means each level is taking like seven or eight minutes and I'm totally blowing past the time. And maybe they want me to replay those levels, but I'm not doing that. So that was like something that bothered me about it. But it is nice to go back and forth between Heavy Knight and Skinny Little goo solving puzzles. They're simple puzzles, but I don't know, it passes the time. I'm not mad about it, but I ain't fucking doing it in 2 minutes and 30 seconds. I don't know why they did that. I don't know why they added that part to it. But that's Dross.

[Jake Decker]

Is this. Is this a first person game?

[Mary Kish Woo]

No. You see them like top down.

[Jake Decker]

Huh? Because I mean, I searched Dross on Steam and I got like a Boomer shooter looking game that sounds nothing like you just described. So that's kind of interesting. There were two games called Dross.

[Mary Kish Woo]

That's impossible. It's. I'll send you the link.

[Jake Decker]

Did I. Did I. Maybe I misspelled it. D R O S S Dros. Oh, yeah.

[Mary Kish Woo]

What are the odds that there's two. This is like the second time that I'm telling you, like, be careful because these games are like, so specific.

[Jake Decker]

Yep. Okay, I see the one you're talking about. Now that. That matches more your description. I. Yeah. Okay.

[Mary Kish Woo]

That's so funny. Dr. O S. Yeah, you're like a little guy and there's an eyeball, like sticking out of you. That's the goo. And so the goo is able to, like, go into pipes and go into tiny spaces. But again, the goo can get killed very quickly. The only thing that doesn't get killed quickly is the guy in the night and he also has a sword, so he can, like attack bosses and stuff like that. And eventually you get, like, to boss fight situations. I'll probably keep playing it. I. I don't think it's bad at all. I enjoyed, like, getting through the puzzles that I played so far. My only gripe with it is, is like, I think it's confusing that you would ask me to solve and find everything but then also give me a time limit. It's like, well, not a time limit, but they reward you for getting through it in a very short amount of time. And it's like, but you want me to find all the stuff. Make up your mind. Do you mean to do it quickly or do you want me to do it right? You know that, you know that. Like, what's it called? What is it when it's two circles and they overlap a little bit and then there's information diagram. Okay. It's like that Venn diagram that's about art. And it's like, do you want it cheap, do you want it quick, or do you want it good? Oh, talking about.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, that's. That's the triangle, right? The production triangle.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It's not a triangle. It's a Venn diagram. No, it's a triangle.

[Jake Decker]

It's a triangle. Yeah, because it's, it's.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's argued with herself and refuted herself.

[Jake Decker]

Fast, cheap and good. You can only pick two.

[Mary Kish Woo]

You know. You know what really sucks is I didn't know what the word for a Venn diagram is, but I know the word for a triangle, so I could have saved myself a lot. I could have have saved myself a lot of hurt if I would have just gone with triangle. From the beginning here. But yeah. So anyway, it's kind of like that. The game was like, do it fast, complete it 100% and don't get hurt too much. And it's like, pick two.

[Jake Decker]

Well, speaking of time limits, did either of you ever play the original Dead Rising?

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. Yeah, you did?

[Jake Decker]

I loved it because I got a preview of the remaster a couple weeks ago last week. But it's like all I've been thinking about. I love that original game. I think that is like one of the most slept on classics of that generation. Super rough around the edges at the time with that infamous time limit that I think a lot of people didn't like. Or maybe they did. I don't know.

[Mike Mahardy]

I don't think people liked it. I don't know. I honestly don't know. I think people who like, critically people liked it and people who were into that game were into it, but I think people just bounced off, they didn't like it. I don't even know if this was an era where people hated something. They would just like review bomb it.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, I don't think that was a thing.

[Mike Mahardy]

What have they done with the remaster? It's just strictly visual. But they've kept everything else.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yeah. Did they upgrade anything else or just visual?

[Jake Decker]

Yeah. So, I mean, I've only played the first day and a half, I think, because that was. That was all I was able to play for the preview. They. It's. It's basically a lot of quality of life changes, plus better visuals. Quality of life includes like better mission tracking, a compass that works better. I don't know if you remember in the original there was just that arrow that kind of floated around and kind of didn't really help much because it was hard to always tell which way it was pointing. Especially when it like sporadically tell you to u turn or whatever. Yeah, the aiming is much better. Like once again, I don't know how well you remember that original, but using firearms was almost kind of pointless just because of how bad that aiming was and you couldn't move it like took a page from RE4, which makes sense at the time. Where is. You aim and you just. You plant your feet in the ground. Don't go anywhere, but in this you get to move. But man, I think that game holds up so well otherwise. Like, there are some things that are still kind of funky. Like pretty much every quest ends up being a. What's it called, a mission where you take a person from point A to point B. Escort mission. Escort mission.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Blanket on the word evil, boring missions.

[Jake Decker]

They sucked so much in that original, I remember. And this. They're still there because they're so core to the game. But your companions are much better at fending for themselves for the most part. Obviously, every now and then there'll be someone who has, like, trouble walking or whatever. You have to hold their hand or have them on your shoulder. But, yeah, I don't know. I'm playing it. And it was like, man, game design at that time was so much more interesting, I feel like, because a lot of these, like, edges hadn't been sawed off. It hadn't been, like, focus tested, where it's like, yeah, we're going to make every weapon in this, Every item in this mall a weapon, even though, like, half of them suck and they serve no purpose. Like, you can throw CDs at zombies, but it doesn't do anything. And then, like, they also, like. Like, the amount of zombies they fit on screen is still kind of impressive. And that was that time where, like, they're like, yeah, with the power of the Xbox 360, we can fit 500 zombies on screen. And now they're like, yeah, with the power of these consoles now, like, the lighting looks a little better. I'm like, ah, no, I want the days where it's just like, they cram as many zombies as they can. But anyway, all that to say, I played the preview about a week and a half ago or so and I can't wait to play the rest of it because game holds up. Game's a classic.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Cool. I love that game. I think that was, like, around. When did that game come out originally?

[Jake Decker]

I think it was 2008 or 2007. It was 6.

[Mike Mahardy]

It was the year with Bully Oblivion.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Company of Heroes, Half Light or Twilight Princess. Was that Twilight Princess on GameCube or the Wii?

[Jake Decker]

I think they came out at the same time. Right. On both. But it was 20. No, it was when the Wii came out. 2007.

[Mike Mahardy]

I thought it came out on GameCube first and then it came out on the Wii right after.

[Jake Decker]

I think it was reverse.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay. But, yeah, either way, dead rising was 2006.

[Mary Kish Woo]

What a phenomenal game. I love that the imagery on the Steam page is there's a screenshot of hitting a zombie with a teddy bear, which is so iconic to this original game because for anyone who did not play the original game, you get to basically make anything a weapon. A bat, a teddy bear, a hat. There's like Lego heads that you can put on them.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah. You can slam on zombie heads.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It is silly. It is a silly game, and it does it really well. There's an enemy. There's like a boss fight that's like a clown that's so crazy with, like, just a wild ride of a game. And I think I'm really looking forward to an extraordinary excuse to be in. It's a mall, right? Like, to be in, like, a mall and just fuck around.

[Mike Mahardy]

George Romero for hours.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yeah, very George Romero. Yeah. In this one, can you make smoothies or is that the next one?

[Jake Decker]

Yep, you can make smoothies. You can. You take two ingredients and. And make a smoothie, and some make you run fast. And it just. It looks stupid as hell because you don't actually sprint. You're just still walking really fast, but you zip around the map. There's just. There's a charm. Charm to this game that I like. I felt like they just kind of slowly kind of got rid of by the time four came around, but one is like. It's so. It's so bizarre. Like, that game would never get made today. Right. I mean, I guess it kind of is getting remade, but still.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, it's got personality and, like, actually is doing something different. Yeah, I want to play that remaster for sure. Can't wait for that.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yeah, that's really exciting. I'm glad that you got to play that. That's such a cool experience and memory for me, playing that game for the first time and, you know, for its time, I think it was really advanced. I think it was doing things that a lot of other games weren't doing. A lot of other games were very much keeping you on a path. And this game was like, whatever. Like, this entire mall is a playpen for you, and you can pick up anything and use it and throw it and hurl it and whatever you really want to do. And then there's just masses of zombies to kill. I think with updated graphics, it's going to be really fun to play. I think streamers are going to love this. I think gamers are going to love coming back to this or just playing this for the first time. So good idea to make. To remaster it and looking forward to playing it.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, I'm excited to play the rest. I also, like, God, Frank west is such a stupid character. I love him so much. Like, he. And. And I feel like, because they brought him back in four and he was like. I don't know. They, like, once again, like, kind of smoothed all the edges. They made him, like, handsome and like. And like an action hero. And in the original he's just kind of, he's kind of like a skeezy journalist who has got a weird looking face and like super broad shoulders and they just. I don't. It's just, it's something else. I can't wait to play more.

[Mike Mahardy]

Cool. Looking forward to it. Do you guys want to do emails?

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, okay. As usual, you can write it to firescapecastmail.com for questions for the show. Get more in. We're getting through a bunch of the recent batch of influx of emails that we got recently. So give us another batch to get through.

[Mary Kish Woo]

And no one's drawn my best friend.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh yeah, no one sent in the friend that Mary Created from episode what, 87, 86 I think. Go back and listen to that and send one in. I want Tamor's stomach, Tim Terry's chest, my hair.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I think Lucy's neck.

[Mike Mahardy]

Lucy's neck, yeah. It's not gonna make any sense unless you listen. So go back and draw that. We got two emails tonight. Mary, do you want to read this first one from Alex from Australia.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Oh, Australia. Hello, escapers. Dan has told us all many times how cheap his dad is and how proud of that Paul is. But is there anything you're proudly cheap about? Personally, I use a safety razor to shave my head and the cost of that per year is barely north of $5. And given it's the cleanest, smoothest shave you can get, I genuinely feel like I'm cheating someone out of some something. Love the show. Alex and Bendigo Australia. This is a really good email because I feel like even people who like to spend money, there's something that you're like, I am saving so many dollars. This is a good question. I got a noodle on it for a second.

[Mike Mahardy]

Underwear.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Just don't wear it.

[Jake Decker]

No, he's just been wearing the same pair since he was 12.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish Woo]

No, I've been going commando for years. Calvin Klein is always mad at me.

[Jake Decker]

But I don't know what's worse than that or. Yeah, just wearing the same pair of underwear.

[Mike Mahardy]

I just resell the pair I've had. I bleach it. No, I'm one of those people who like waits till like the last possible minute to get new underwear and then I buy like 30 new pairs and then I lasts another like six years.

[Mary Kish Woo]

That's a weird one.

[Mike Mahardy]

What else am I proudly.

[Jake Decker]

I feel like I'm surprisingly cheap about a lot of things unless they're tech related. Right. Like I bought like a rodecaster pro so I can, you know, do sound effects like that, which was not cheap with this SM7B mic. But other than that, I try not to spend money on much else besides that. Cheap beer, usually.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Jake Decker]

But the thing is too, in San Francisco, like, even cheap stuff is usually fucking expensive.

[Mike Mahardy]

So yeah, I, despite my love of good wine, I actually do not spend much money on beer at all. When I get beer, I actually, I'm not averse to slamming some peebs. I like, I like pbr. I wouldn't say it's like the most delicious thing I drink, but I'm very up for. There's something like Labatt Blue and Labatt Blue Light especially. The latter are the best beers ever made. I don't know how anybody would top them. So why would I spend more than $13 on a six pack of beer?

[Mary Kish Woo]

I think I can be cheap when it comes to food in general. I hate food waste. And I'm the kind of person that when I have six different random bits and bobs in my fridge, I will be like, well, I'm making the weirdest curry ever. And I will just make sure that I use every part of it because I don't want to waste it and I paid for it and so I feel cheap about it. But I'm also like very cheap about my produce in the sense that like, if green beans are on sale, we're having green beans. Even if I did not plan for it, even if there's no reason to do it. I buy what's on sale at the grocery store. I, I, it's ingrained in me. I think maybe like from when I was a kid and I went with my mother, but like, if there's a bunch of different burger buns, I get the one that's cheap and on sale. That's what I do. I don't care if I don't have a brand of, of bagels that I have to have, I buy the one that's cheap. It's fine.

[Mike Mahardy]

I like, push that too far. Sometimes where I see something at the grocery store is on sale, like, I had no intention of eating fucking like mangoes that week, but they're on sale, so I'm saving money. If I get them, like, I go out of my way.

[Mary Kish Woo]

You can't afford not to get mangoes.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I'm saving $4 if I buy mangoes compared to the usual zero that I usually buy.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Speaking of which, like, getting the sales is I've just bought a freaking freezer. This is something I think adults do in their adult life. But I finally purchased a freezer for my basement so that when meat is on sale I can buy it in bulk and keep it in a freezer and then I can get out my cheap ass two dollar chicken that I bought on super sale in bulk. I'm also like probably going to get a Costco subscription because now I that I have this freezer, I can buy hamburger patties in bulk and get a really good deal on hamburger patties. Like it's just, it's always been a part of me and I've always been limited by my freezer capacity and not anymore. But that purchase is very strictly cheap related because it's about buying cheap meat in bulk.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, meat's not something I skimp on. I don't want to buy cheap meat that's on sale.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Usually I'm a freak. I will even you know like where they'll put meat on super sale because it's like, hey, you gotta eat this. Like probably in the next two days I buy it and then I'm just like, I'll eat it tonight.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. If I see that red meat is like, hey, this is on sale and it looks fine and then I open, I smell it, it's fine, I eat it. Chicken. I'm much wary or about, I'm risky.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I'm risky with chicken too. But I won't eat if it's gone bad. But like if it's on sale and they're like, you know why it's on sale? I'm like, whatever. I'll just eat it immediately. I'll just eat it as soon as possible.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I, there's like, I really, really like and I'm not really proudly cheap or with coffee. In fact I really value like good coffee most of the time. On Saturday mornings my neighborhood has a farmer's market and I've started getting my coffee from there because this comp, this local company brings their coffee. So I get it from there if I can. However, I'm definitely not. My palette for coffee, as much as I love it is not that discerning. So if I go to. As long as I'm getting whole beans so I can grind it here, that's my only nitpick. Like I want to be grinding it here. It tastes way fresher when you do it yourself. I'll get fucking Dunkin Donuts if it's on sale. I love Dunkin Donuts coffee. I am pretty proud of Dunkin Donuts and that's a northeast thing I think it is. But Starbucks is dog shit. Dunkin Donuts. I'm proudly cheap about that. That I get. Actually, I am pretty proud of that. But otherwise I'll just go for the on sale coffee. Like if it's like $7 for the whole beans, perfect. It'll last me a week.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I like good coffee. That's where I. That's where I break. I like to have a good cup of coffee. But like I said, like, there's certain things I just don't think I can tell the taste difference with, you know, like, like bread. I usually just buy whatever is cheapest. Or pasta. You know, like the box pasta.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, the. That's like 85 cents or whatever.

[Mary Kish Woo]

And it's not the cheapest pasta shells you've ever seen seen in your life. I will buy that shit. It will be Kroger brand. I do not care. It's fine. I'm putting sauce on it. Like, I don't.

[Jake Decker]

I don't know why you'd get pasta that's expensive. Like, unless you're at a restaurant, of course. But like at the store. No, you're just going to get the cheapest pasta you can.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. This is sort of a roundabout way to answer the question. I've actually been trying to DIY more foods. And I don't mean cooking. I cook a lot. I've been trying to make my own. Like tonight, for instance, for dinner, I made. I had leftover. No, I don't pickle things yet. I will at some point, I'm sure. I had leftover, like a half of a baguette that we weren't gonna eat. And it was going stale. So I was like, oh, I'll make my own croutons.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Croutons?

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I've been doing that. Yesterday I made what may have been the best meal I've made, if not in my life than in a very long time. The farmer's market again, where we have started trying to get most of our groceries. Cause they're all literal people from around here. It's also just cheaper than King's, which if you live in New Jersey or around here, you know, King's can get stupid expensive in the produce. We got like this Chilean sea bass. I was trying to create the dish from my wedding. I don't know if you guys ordered that. It was like my favorite thing ever.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I had the bass.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. So I made miso glazed Chilean sea bass on basmati rice. And I made using that same baguette before it went stale. I made my own like parmigianado. I think it's called. It's the breadcrumbs that you'll get on pasta to add texture. Like the crunchy texture to like angel hair or any kind of pasta, I guess. And I put that on the fish with and I just cook down the marinade from the fish kind of to a reduction. Basmati rice. I looked up how to like make it like that perfect sticky texture. You do one and a half cups water to every one cup rice and it turned out incredible. But it like, to your point, Mary, of not wasting anything, I'm kind of proud. It's like, oh, okay, so now I know what to do with like stale bread now or I know what to do so I don't waste all of that marinade. And I know this is. These are not, these are not like the newest revelations ever, but it's like I'm definitely getting to a point where I'm more confident like making more use getting a lot out of one ingredient as opposed to just dumping all that marinade down the sink. Once it's done, the fish is done sitting in it over there.

[Mary Kish Woo]

That's probably what Paul does too, you know, because he's like known for being really cheap. And I bet you he like makes.

[Mike Mahardy]

He makes Chilean sea bass marinade again. He makes his miso reduction. He doesn't want to mace the mirin, the sweet wine vinegar. Yeah, it's a very Paul vibe I'm channeling lately.

[Mary Kish Woo]

That's a good one. I think the last thing I'll say is, like, I also am a sucker for deals when it comes to eating out. So usually when I go out to eat, I am paying attention to sales and deals that restaurants stew. And one of my favorite things that I like to do is there's a restaurant that I like. Well, it's just a cafe and it has avocado toast and coffee. And on one day of the week you can get avocado toast a little cheaper. And it's two pieces of bread with avocado on it. So if me and my partner go and we have two coffees with one avocado toast that we split, it's a dollar seven breakfast, baby. Damn, with tip, you can't get a seven dollar breakfast in the fucking city anymore. That's crazy. That's crazy.

[Jake Decker]

Can't get that anywhere, I'm telling you.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, that's. That's another thing. I'm very proudly cheap about diner food. Like, I fucking love diner. That's. I would, I would pay a lot of Money for diner food. Because I just. A good diner is, like, one of the best things in the world. It's up there with dive bars in terms of, like, just pure things that I never want to lose, but it's usually not too expensive. Like, when I go back to Syracuse, when I'm visiting family, there's a couple diners that I try to hit up all the time, and they have shitty coffee most of the time.

[Mary Kish Woo]

And I like shitty diner coffee that I accept. I don't think that that is comparable to, like, making yourself a sad cup of Folgers. Like, going to a diner and having just diner coffee. Delicious.

[Jake Decker]

A happy cup of Folgers.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Yeah, that's right. It was made with love by Donda.

[Jake Decker]

I was gonna say, I hate paying full price for clothes. Like, I. That's what I'm always looking for sales on, like, I just ordered. The only thing, the only exception I'll make is usually, like, Levi's, because I have a size and style that fits. And I just buy that every time one wears out, which, to be fair, takes a while. But Levi's just had a big sale where they were, like, selling jeans for $20, and I was like, yep, this is my. This is my moment. Yeah, clothes are a big one. A lot of the shirts I wear are free. I got them from events or other stuff. Except concert shirts. Sometimes I'll splurge on a concert shirt, but those I don't even wear a whole lot because I don't want to ruin them, which is stupid. But, you know, yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

There'S definitely. There's definitely things, as people know, that I, like, don't skimp on. But I'm just as likely. There's certain things I really don't care to spend money on. I'm the same way. Like, I'll go on the same three websites to see what they have on sale, clothes wise.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah. I will say functional stuff, like jackets and sweatshirts, mostly jackets like, that I'm willing to spend a little more on because I actually want a jacket to work well, you know, suits, et cetera.

[Mike Mahardy]

Like, things you need to like.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, that sort of stuff that has more of a purpose.

[Mike Mahardy]

But, like, there's, like, things that should be expensive because the labor involved with making, like, a good version of it. Like, I don't want to be paying just, like, $100 for a suit that I need to be wearing to weddings and potentially funerals and whatnot. Like, I don't. Yeah, that's in that middle ground where it's like, I might as well splurge because otherwise I'm paying, like, I'm going to get what I pay for. But, yeah, anything that's, like, can be under $50. I don't mind going as low as I possibly can.

[Jake Decker]

I will say kind of in response to this email right here, I spend a lot of money on haircuts. I still go to the same place, Mike, that people's in on Polk Street. And I think when I first started going there around the same time you went there first, you told me about it, haircuts were $40. Now they're like 65, $70. And that's been, what, six years or so? Yeah. And I. What am I going to do? You know? Like, I don't want to.

[Mary Kish Woo]

You got your guy. Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Is that the kind of place where.

[Mary Kish Woo]

They give you a drink?

[Jake Decker]

They do, and I abuse that. Because it's free. Because they can't actually. You can't actually, like, they can't.

[Mike Mahardy]

Well, they're factoring alcohol, right? Yeah, but it. I'm sure they're factoring the price of the haircuts into, like, the stocking of alcohol and whatnot. I mean, I don't know.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Well, they're averaging it, and they're assuming you're not going to ask for four beers.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, that's when you get them. It's like, that's how you get your $65 worth of a haircut is you have slam a sixer right before you get it checked.

[Jake Decker]

I check in and I walk away from the fridge with just six beers.

[Mike Mahardy]

Tucked in and just leave and go back to the office.

[Jake Decker]

Oh, yeah, sorry. I got my hair cut last week.

[Mike Mahardy]

I'm just do. I'll just do a quick trim. Cindy, she trims just one side where you're like, okay, that's good. Yeah, There's. I also don't spend much money on razors, but I also don't. Like. I have an electric razor I bought a while ago, so I don't really shave with other razors. I'm just mentioning, like, what Alex in Australia said. Thank you, Alex, for writing in. Jake, do you want to read this one from Josh?

[Jake Decker]

I'll try. I can't read out loud, but we'll see how this goes.

[Mike Mahardy]

Are you serious?

[Jake Decker]

I'm really bad at it, so bear with me.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay.

[Jake Decker]

I'm writing to you for career advice. As devastating as it was to see Game Informer go, it was great to hear you reminisce about your experiences at the company and talk about the early Days of your careers in Games Media. I'm 23 years old from Maine who has worked in theater for the last couple years. As someone with the intention to pivot into filmmaking, I gotta ask, how do you find the courage to make the big first move? It's amazing and terrifying to hear stories of people my age taking big risks and getting great gigs in the media industry. What advice would you offer to my cohort of ambitious upstarts? Thank you for the wisdom, Josh.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Aw, I think that's really sweet. This is a good question and I actually I just had a call with a nephew of mine who's also early 20s, graduated from film school, he is in the Buffalo area and we had this call about what he wants to do and he would like to get into film and asked me for some starting tips and tricks of what I did when I graduated from a video production background to get my start and the advice I gave him was that you should be joining groups and social clubs and events that will get you around other like minded people that are passionate about film and video because that is where your job will come from. It is very unlikely that sending out your resume a thousand times, no matter how much you fine tune it, is going to get you the gig that you're actually looking for. What is more likely to get you that gigantic is going and doing a 48 hour game jam with other people who are passionate about film and one of them also knows somebody who's interested and works in the industry. Or you join a group that meets once a month and has coffee and talks about the projects that they're working on, join clubs, join social groups, find other people that are really passionate about what you do and go do it with them. I don't care if it's for free. I am a subscriber of being able to just do it even if it doesn't pay anything in the beginning just to get your hands dirty, just to get your feet wet, just to get in there. My first job, like legitimate job because I, I was a, a waitress. After I graduated college for several years my first job job was an unpaid internship at a film company and I got the contact by going to film groups and like film clubs in Ohio. That's how I got it and I said I will answer your calls, I will answer the door, I will show up every day and you don't have to pay me. And they were like fine. And that's how I got my in obviously like there's a long road and I wish that I could have just gotten a paid gig immediately. But the truth is, is that me doing it for free is how I got my foot in the door. And so I worked for a film company from 9am to 4pm every day. And then I went from my free paid intern gig to my paid waitressing job job from 5 until like 9 or 10. And so I essentially just worked double shifts for like six months. And after six months or eight months or something like that, they were like, we're going to start paying you. And I still did the waitressing job because I needed the money. And so I kind of just kept both for a while until I was able to pivot those resume builders into a job in games media. So, like, I do think it requires being hungry especially and it's in a creative industry because I think they're very competitive because they're fun and beloved. So if it's something you're really passionate about, I would say, like, have some grit and be willing to do whatever job is offered to you. Not any job, but like a lot of them for a little bit of pay or even no pay, just to meet the right people and get in the right circles. That's my genuine advice to get started.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I'm very much bearing in mind, like, I. If not everybody can make huge changes right away, I think it might help, it will help to have a plan. Like, Josh, you were saying that you've been working in theater but you want to transition into filmmaking. Yeah. Finding the courage is one thing, but if you know what you want to do. And the courage, I find for most people who are really inspired to make a change is not the hard part to come by. It's like if you can make some sort of a plan to, I don't want to say mitigate risk and just completely bail on your dream if there is any semblance of risk. Because I think there's always a se semblance of risk and nerves anytime you make a big change. I think having some sort of plan like foundation before you launch wholeheartedly into something like Mary was saying, I think if you can have some sort of structure where you're still working in theater and making like decent money, but you're also like spending some social time and free time getting into these circles in filmmaking, Freudian slip there like filmmaking and around people who want to make film, and then maybe the opportunities will pop up there as opposed to just being like quitting your job one day and be like, you know what, I'm done. I'm going to go to film school next week. I'm going to pay $10,000 to do so. I'm going all in. That can work for some people that have certain safety nets, et cetera. And I've made some, some in retrospect I've made some like pretty drastic changes. I made some pretty, I took some pretty drastic chances to get into games media and I was, I worked hard but I was also just lucky enough and in the right rooms and met the right people where it all worked out. But I would say if you can like keep, keep like a foot in, in the, you know, like the more stable side of things if you've established yourself in one industry but while you're kind of phasing over into the next, I think that'll make things a lot less hectic. And I say that as someone who just like the last few years of course like when I left at Games Editorial that I was very much like, all right, I'm not at a point in my life where I should just like ditch everything on this side of the fence, jump over and then see kind of what's going on before I really have a plan. You know, there's always going to be some risk. So I guess it's just like, you know, approach it. If, if you're the kind of person who needs like some structure and like planning ahead of time like I usually am. I found that that has helped to like I'm not like a two year, five year plan kind of person but I have found that it helps to write like a long term to do list. Like when I was leaving Games editorial I was like, and I still work in games and like my, you know, my editorial skills have translated. So this isn't completely, but it sounds like theater into filmmaking would be something similar. Like it's not completely, you know, they're adjacent industries. It's like my long term plan, this is hypothetical. It's like, all right, well I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing for the past 12 years for a while but in the meantime I'm also going to be like, you know, seeing so and so as often as I can at these trade shows. I'm going to be, you know, making inroads like with different people on different, whether it's social media or LinkedIn or whatever and then kind of just get a vibe of what's going on over there and then you know, be asking the right questions from these people. I think it's just a matter of like, I think there's this like romantic idea of dropping everything and then like risking everything. And Mary and I have talked about how that has worked for us. But again, at this point in my life with like what I know now, if I like, like my 22 year old self was about to do that, I'd be like, you're fucking stupid. Don't do things like that. It just happened to work out for me. Like if you're passionate about something and no one's going to stop you from making that jump. But I do think it's like it pays to have a stable foundation. I think it'll also just help your personally speaking, I think it'll help your mental health to not have every single thing in your life riding on this change. That's my $0.02. At least.

[Jake Decker]

Both of you guys had really good advice. I think both of those really resonate. I think particularly like finding a group of people who are also interested in filmmaking or whatever your passions are, are super important because that will mobilize you, that will encourage you, that will, that, that will drive you. I also think like with filmmaking in particular, I wouldn't say it's gotten easier, but I do think the tools are like right there in front of you. And especially if you're, if you've worked in theater, you probably know actors. Like I just, I don't know exactly what you want to do in filmmaking, but I just write, write short scripts that have two people in them, get your friends together, shoot it on an iPhone if that's all you got. But if you've got dslr, if someone's got a dslr, like just shoot stuff, shoot as much as you can, write as much as you can, but write in a way that you know, you could film it because just practicing, like just working, like exercising that muscle is super important because I think especially with film, a lot of people are like, yeah, that's what I want to do. But then they don't actually act on any of those ambitions. But like, especially, you know, you're 23, you've got actors nearby. Usually finding actors can be pretty tough. It doesn't need to be crazy productions. Just make a five page script and spend a Sunday making it. Post it on YouTube, post it on video or on Vimeo. Hell, if you're happy with it, send it to film festivals. I guarantee you there are film festivals that will accept it. Like, you know, if it's five minutes, if it's, if it's coherent, if it has some sort of direction to it, some sort of Artistic flair to it. Like, there's probably an audience for it, and you may not find it right away, but it's probably out there. Yeah, I mean, like, I got, I'd say, incredibly lucky as well. Like, I went to film school, but I went to community college, which apparently means a very different thing outside of California. In California, our community colleges are usually pretty good, but I hear outside of California, community colleges are kind of shit. I don't know if that's true, but that's what people have told me. But anyway, I didn't pay anything for that because it was community college. I lived in the area, I had financial aid. And I think the most important thing I got from that is just meeting people who also wanted to make films and short films. And even, like, I just wrapped production or I just wrapped post production on a short film I did earlier this year. And like, the person who produced it, I went to school with the assistant director. I went to school with the cinematographer. I used to work with the editor. I used to work. You know, it's just like, it. It, like I had an entire group of people to pull from, and it was all just people I knew, and a lot of them were from school, you know, a lot of them were just people I met through work. Some I didn't even know were interested in that sort of thing, but they were. And, you know, yeah, that. That's. I would say, just start doing shit.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, you've been doing more fictional filmmaking lately. Been finding some success and doing some exciting shit, which I'm excited to see.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, Just finished a short film that we sent to a bunch of film festivals. Have not heard back from any, so we'll see how it goes. But. But yeah, and that was just like. That came about because a friend of mine who I met in school wrote a script and he was like, hey, you should direct this. And I was like, I can certainly try. And, you know, we got in touch with my friend who was a producer, and like, it just. It just spirals. It's.

[Mary Kish Woo]

It.

[Jake Decker]

It spirals just based on people, you know? So if you don't have that school connection, like Mary was saying, like, go to clubs. I mean, it. I hate Facebook. But, like, there's got to be a main filmmaker.

[Mary Kish Woo]

There are usually based on Facebook group Reddit, you know, like, your local city usually will have some kind of club that helps. Sometimes LinkedIn has them. But I find LinkedIn so gross sometimes. I'm just like, I have a hard time recommending cynical anymore. It just doesn't Feel genuine. Every time someone posts, I just feel like they're straight up lying. There's a lot of marketing lie on LinkedIn.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, it's. It's largely like CMOS and Biz Dev. People use it for their, like, for their companies. Like, my wider company uses it a lot. It's. It's. It's almost less. Less social media and more like an extension of the marketing arm for each company. So, yeah, it's got a. It's got a different sheen to it, for sure than like Instagram or Twitter is gonna. But yeah, I found a lot of. I've been, like, looking for, like, wine tasting groups in New York, and there's a surprising number of, like, Reddit threads for other people looking for it. I think there's always gonna be someone else looking for the same thing. You are, You're. You're not. You're never gonna be the only person with, with an interest in your area, I feel like. Unless you live in, like, Greenland, then.

[Jake Decker]

In which case, how are you listening to this podcast? I would say, like, in terms of courage. Like, I, like, I think what Mike said speaks a lot to that, where it's like, if you're kind of taking a measured approach to it, you don't necessarily need courage. You just need a plan.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. Thank you for writing in, Josh. And that's our show. Like I said, everybody write in. We get more questions than getting through. That was 88. We just warped in the DeLorean this episode. Yeah, Dan is gonna. I think we'll be back next episode. Jake, always great to have you on. For anybody who might not know, Jake is the lifeblood of the podcast and does all the production for it and makes sure it sounds good, looks good, gets up on time. Jake, what do you have going on outside? I know you talked about Warframe stuff, but what else is going on at Gamespot and film stuff?

[Jake Decker]

Oh, God. I mean, I have this short film that's supposed to go to some film festivals later this year and then hopefully I'll release it to a, you know, Vimeo, YouTube or whatever. Probably early worked on it.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Is it just you? Is it a small crew? What is it?

[Jake Decker]

It's like 30 people. There's a cast of six people. Cast is kind of cool. Actually, one of the guys was on It's Always Sunny. Well, one of. No, one of the guys was on. I think you should leave, though.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Oh, neat.

[Jake Decker]

And then someone else was on Curb youb Enthusiasm. And then. Yeah, we had like a full crew. Andrea was the cinematographer.

[Mary Kish Woo]

I Love Drea. Yeah, former Games Bop often Drea and Twitch. I hired Dre as a videographer or cinematographer for a lot of freelance stuff. And what's really fucking crazy is that there was like a couple opportunities where we were like, hey, I think this could be a full time role. Andrea would be like, no, I only want to work freelance so that I can make my, my independent films. I don't give a shit about anything else. I will do this because I need the money and the work and it's good for me. But ultimately she's been put on this earth to make her independent films and I respect that so much that I like love working with her.

[Jake Decker]

Yeah, she fucking rules. I mean, she came in Clutch many times throughout that production. Like had connections to get us a nice camera. Like just all once again, like, just connections. You never know where these connections are going to come from. But yeah, that short film, I would say Gamespot wise. Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure there's some shit coming up.

[Mike Mahardy]

Mary, what about you?

[Mary Kish Woo]

Same as usual. Right now I'm just streaming every Monday. I've been streaming a lot of the games that I'm talking about. So if you want to get a first look at what I'm thinking when I'm playing these games, check out the Twitch. Honestly, I think that's it because I'm preparing for Twitch Con in one month. It's literally four weeks away. So that's where all my energy is going. But I will be in San Diego in four weeks for TwitchCon.

[Jake Decker]

Sweet.

[Mike Mahardy]

And I am just here in terms of forward facing stuff. All my other day job stuff now is behind the scenes. Cool as usual. You can go to firescapecast.com if you want to be a patron and get ad free tier episodes or video versions of episodes or if you just like what we do and want to contribute and treat it as a tip jar, so to speak, to fund our bonus episodes. But especially our end of the year game of the year extravaganza that we've done for the last. This will be our fourth this year, if we're counting.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Inspired it all as well. Because we wouldn't be here without the Christmas special because that's kind of what.

[Mike Mahardy]

No, no, no. The first thing we did was the halfway through 2020, wasn't it?

[Mary Kish Woo]

Oh, I thought it was the Christmas special. Did. I thought that was the very first time we all got together as a business.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, yeah, yeah. I thought you meant the whole thing that inspired Fire Escape.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Well, what I'm Saying is that the first time we all got together is kind of what led to Fire Escape.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. In Connecticut.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Correct. I also wanted to say we also had a new episode of Kanini. So if anybody likes watching me and Mike play Resident Evil once every three months, we've released a new episode and it's pretty good. So thank you.

[Jake Decker]

Are you guys almost done?

[Mike Mahardy]

I have to be the next episode.

[Mary Kish Woo]

Gotta be close.

[Mike Mahardy]

You're about to kill Fight Krauser. Two episodes max left.

[Mary Kish Woo]

We gotta be close.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. Go subscribe to the fire Escape Cast YouTube channel. Just so you see that when they come up and we put our bonus episodes there, you're not going. If it's a patron bonus episode, you won't see that. Those obviously go up unlisted. And you put the. We put the link on Patreon. But if it's just. If it's a bonus episode for everybody, or rather just a public episode for everybody, they'll go up on that channel. You can also go to fire escapemerch.com youm can get. The summer stuff is still there. That's at fourth wall, I believe. But fire escape merch. Go look at our Patreon or Instagram. You can find our merch links and go buy some cool stuff. Don't buy the Star wars scroll mouse pad. Sorry. Don't buy the sci Fi scroll mouse pad. Or the shirt. No one wants to see that in public. But anyway, thank you everybody for joining. It was episode 88. We're getting toward 100. I think we did the math. It'll be like February when we do 100. Figure out something fun for that and then, yeah, we'll start talking in the next month or two about what we're going to do end of the year wise. I'm sure we'll be fun and dumb. I still have like four big games I need to catch up on so I can beat all of you in an argument about all of them. So that'll be fun. But in the meantime, we will see everybody else in two weeks. Until then, have fun. Be good.

[Mary Kish Woo]

See ya.

[Jake Decker]

See y'all. And thanks again for having me.

[Mike Mahardy]

See you next time.

[Jake Decker]

Bye.