Blue Prince is the First Must-Play Game of 2025

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Besties – "Blueprints is the First Must-Play Game of 2025"

Introduction In this episode of The Besties, hosts Chris Plante, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, and Russ Frushtick delve into the latest developments in the gaming world, with a particular focus on the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 and the highly anticipated game Blueprints. Released on April 11, 2025, this episode promises rich discussions, insightful critiques, and engaging conversations for both avid gamers and casual listeners.

Nintendo Switch 2 Announcement and Features The episode kicks off with an enthusiastic discussion about the newly announced Nintendo Switch 2. The hosts express a mix of excitement and skepticism regarding its features and release logistics.

• Release Date and Pre-Order Status

  • Russ Freshick (04:22): "We still can't pre-order the Switch 2. We still don't know when it's actually coming out in the United States and Canada."
  • Griffin McElroy (05:07): "I think they said it's still planned for the June 5th release date, but that has changed."

• Ergonomics and Design Improvements

  • Russ Freshick (07:07): "It's better than the Switch one, mostly because of the size, like, because it's taller. So your hands can actually, like, grip the whole thing."
  • Griffin McElroy (08:41): "I use that feature a shocking amount for Switch one when I'm traveling and Henry wants to play like a multiplayer game on Switch."

• Game Chat Feature The Switch 2 introduces a dedicated Game Chat button, sparking a debate on its necessity and execution.

  • Justin McElroy (10:08): "I think that the new button for Game Chat is trying to get ahead of a market that is playing games in maybe a different way than we did."
  • Russ Freshick (10:29): "If you press the button and you're not subscribed to Nintendo Switch Online, it just pulls up an ad for how great Nintendo Switch Online is."

Donkey Kong Bonanza and Mario Kart World The hosts transition to discussing Donkey Kong Bonanza and Mario Kart World, highlighting their features and release strategies.

• Donkey Kong Bonanza

  • Russ Freshick (25:49): "It feels like a Hulk game is what it feels like. Kind of let loose in these environments."
  • Griffin McElroy (26:46): "Level the entire level, take the thing to the studs."

• Mario Kart World The open-world approach of Mario Kart World is a significant departure from previous iterations.

  • Russ Freshick (28:11): "It feels like they're trying to flesh out the single-player experience with that open world."
  • Griffin McElroy (29:49): "The tracks were much more wide-ranging, mixing and matching biomes within the same track."

Blueprints: A Deep Dive into the Must-Play Game The heart of the episode centers on the game Blueprints, receiving high praise from the hosts for its innovative mechanics and engaging puzzles.

• Game Mechanics and Comparison to Board Games

  • Griffin McElroy (46:29): "A touchstone that may be helpful for some folks is Betrayal at House on the Hill."
  • Justin McElroy (50:17): "It is the dark souls of thinking. You're learning the vocabulary of this house and how it thinks."

• Accessibility Concerns

  • Russ Freshick (42:14): "For colorblind people like me, obviously, you'll have a lot of difficulty playing this."
  • Justin McElroy (55:19): "The passage of days was a lot more frustrating for me because I thought the way that days are, like, counting very definitively makes you feel like there's a time pressure."

• Creator's Influence and Game Design

  • Christopher Thomas Plant (58:24): "The game feels like they are whispering to you, guiding your experience thoughtfully."
  • Griffin McElroy (63:02): "It has truly had some of the most memorable moments, most satisfying, like, solutions."

Additional Highlights Beyond the main topics, the hosts touch upon other cultural mediums that have captured their attention.

• Minecraft Movie Experience

  • Griffin McElroy (65:37): "Imagine how you would make a Minecraft movie and make it actually, like, extremely Minecraft and not like the 1993 Super Mario Bros."

• Television Insights: White Lotus

  • Justin McElroy (68:41): "White Lotus is a really, really well-written and acted TV show. Each season explores themes like income inequality, sex, and death with a clear point of view."

Conclusion The episode wraps up with teasers for upcoming discussions and a nod to their Patreon supporters, ensuring listeners stay connected for future insights and reviews.

• Upcoming Discussions

  • Griffin McElroy (73:38): "Next week, we're talking about Promise Mascot Agency, the new game from the studio that did Bestie's favorite, Paradise Killer."

• Final Thoughts

  • Griffin McElroy (74:10): "We make a promise up front that we're not gonna spoil anything. It's impossible to not spoil something just by talking about it."

Notable Quotes

• Russ Freshick (07:07): "It's better than the Switch one, mostly because of the size, like, because it's taller."
• Justin McElroy (10:08): "I think that the new button for Game Chat is trying to get ahead of a market."
• Griffin McElroy (46:29): "Betrayal at House on the Hill."
• Justin McElroy (50:17): "It is the dark souls of thinking."
• Griffin McElroy (63:02): "It has truly had some of the most memorable moments."

Final Thoughts This episode of The Besties offers a comprehensive exploration of the latest in gaming, particularly spotlighting the innovative Blueprints game and the much-anticipated Nintendo Switch 2. The hosts’ dynamic discussions provide listeners with valuable insights, making it a must-listen for anyone passionate about the evolving landscape of video games.

Transcript

[Griffin McElroy]

Hey, guys, is this anything? If you want to build a manor, just go ahead now.

[Justin McElroy]

Blue Princess.

[Griffin McElroy]

If you're an architecture planner, just go ahead now. And if you want to solve a puzzle, just go ahead now. And if you inherit.

[Justin McElroy]

Draft that hole, find that key. I'm the.

[Russ Freshick]

Okay, so this is.

[Justin McElroy]

Get me target. Draft a hole, find that key.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Get that gem. Is that a spoiler, Russ?

[Russ Freshick]

No, I don't want to spoil. It's not that it's a spoiler.

[Justin McElroy]

You gotta make the lyrics more generic.

[Russ Freshick]

I don't think you can make song parodies about games that haven't been culturally. Like, they haven't clicked yet, except for about 30 people on the Internet.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Or maybe you think that's the problem for our audience. You don't think it's that they're like Gin Blossoms? Not familiar.

[Russ Freshick]

They're definitely familiar with the Gin Blossoms.

[Griffin McElroy]

Was that. I'm pretty sure that was Spin Doctor.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

You're right. I'm sorry. You could say I was a little missed. Can't be wrong. But I was wrong.

[Griffin McElroy]

Little mister. Must be wrong.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah. Hey, you know what? Getting. Getting van names, right? It's my pocket full of kryptonite that even rhymed.

[Justin McElroy]

We're not going to do better than that. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week.

[Griffin McElroy]

My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the year. Deal with it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week.

[Russ Freshick]

My name is Ross Freshnick. I know the best game of the week.

[Justin McElroy]

Welcome to the Besties, where we're going to talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club, and just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member of our illustrious ranks. This week, we got a double header for you. We're going to be talking about the Nintendo Switch 2 and blueprints. Russ, you know about the Nintendo Switch, too. We don't need to clarify that. Plant, what's the deal with Blueprints?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Blueprints? Is it a puzzle game? Is it an adventure game? Is it the greatest game of all time? I don't know. We'll talk about it.

[Justin McElroy]

I don't know. We'll talk about it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Figure it out.

[Justin McElroy]

We'll have an answer for you right after this.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

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[Justin McElroy]

You know it's funny guys. Last week we recorded our sort of like last minute switch two things and because of the timing, we didn't quite know what was going on with the Switch 2 yet. Hilariously, even if we had recorded our Switch 2 reactions after the Switch 2 announcement but not the next day, we still would have been like out of date. Like we still would have been out of the loop. It's a moment to moment, fluid changing situation.

[Russ Freshick]

Things are moving quickly. We still can't Pre order the Switch 2. We still don't know when it's actually coming out in the United States and Canada for Canada.

[Griffin McElroy]

Well, sorry, by the way, Canada, our.

[Justin McElroy]

President sucks so bad.

[Griffin McElroy]

Sucks so bad.

[Justin McElroy]

It's not bring over the switch.

[Griffin McElroy]

I think they said it's still planned for the June 5th release date, but.

[Russ Freshick]

We don't know when it's not.

[Griffin McElroy]

So that has changed.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

That assumes you believe anything that's optimistic right now and can't just change within a minute.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, I mean I think that that is the. I mean, okay, let's not get in the weeds. Let's talk about the big picture and.

[Griffin McElroy]

Then we're coming in late enough on Switch 2 conversation that I feel like we can maybe vaul over some of the brass tacks stuff.

[Justin McElroy]

I would like to know. I did not get to hear your guys's, like, first blush. I'd like to hear the fun. Before we get into the mechanics of, you know, political geopolitical currency manipulation. Like, let's. Let's talk first about. Would you. Would you. You touched it, right?

[Russ Freshick]

I mean, just me. I'm the only one who touched it.

[Justin McElroy]

I'm looking at you. You're the one above my. In my. It's very clear that I'm pointing at you in my mind.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

On a scale of one to fun, how fun is Mario Kart? Got it. Nine Fun out of one being full fun.

[Griffin McElroy]

One is. It's a binary system. I don't know why you're being so difficult.

[Russ Freshick]

Look, I think we should start with the basics. Is what is it like to pick this thing up? Because guess what? Every single game requires that you at least pick this thing up.

[Justin McElroy]

Great.

[Russ Freshick]

Sure.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Got it.

[Russ Freshick]

I kind of wish it was better to pick this thing up.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh, really?

[Russ Freshick]

It's better than the switch one. I will say that.

[Justin McElroy]

Okay, can we stop? Let's stop right? Real quick. Do you want to talk about your first reactions to the switch one? Because you were pretty notoriously, epically wrong about the switch one in a way that was, like, catastrophic. Was I predicting? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You. You were very down on the Switch 1. After your first time with it, you were like, I don't really get it. I don't know what they're doing here. And it became a massive success. I feel like your tracker in here is, like, really, listeners, if you go back and clip out Russ being wrong.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah, please.

[Griffin McElroy]

About the switch line.

[Russ Freshick]

Please do. I just. It's been eight years, and I just kind of wish that, like, someone was looking at the ergonomics and being like, we could do a little better.

[Griffin McElroy]

You're talking about the lack of sort of, like, hand holds.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah, it's just not. It's just still not great to hold. It's better than the switch one, mostly because of the size, like, because it's taller. So your hands can actually, like, grip the whole thing.

[Griffin McElroy]

But how is this. How is the screen? I've heard good things.

[Russ Freshick]

Screen seems fine. It's bigger. I don't know. It was nice. I'm not like, a screen junkie, if you will. It was bigger. You know, the ergonomics was what jumped out at me initially. I don't think it's bad. I think if you have A Switch one and you're fine with it, this will be fine too. It just like, it bums me out that I will definitely need. If I want to play in handheld mode for any length of time, I will definitely need a grip for sure.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. Is it, is it okay? I'm wondering about that. Right. Because I've been messing around with a lot of these, like, portable computer, like the, like, you know, the, your, your rocks, your rods, your Odin, whatever. A lot of those ergonomics are coming in aftermarket. Right. Because people are getting like the solutions that they want for them. Right. So if you're traveling a lot with it or you're just going to use it docked in a lot of ways, like maybe that's, maybe you don't want the extra bulk of like good ergonomics, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm wondering if like on a default there's, there's really good Joy Cons where it's like you can put those on and it's like more of that, but you're trading like the flexibility.

[Russ Freshick]

I think that's Nintendo. I didn't get this quote, but I think that's Nintendo's rationale is they want, they needed to design something that could work not only in handheld mode, not only something that you could dock, but also something that you could take the Joy Cons off and use them sideways and not have them be a total disaster for your hands.

[Griffin McElroy]

Sure.

[Russ Freshick]

And if something had like a grip on the back of it, you're not going to hold it sideways. Now the number of times I actually use the Joy Con sideways for the Switch one is about three. They do feel better sideways now, I think because the larger size and they made the L and R buttons easier to press, but it's still like not great. But it is.

[Griffin McElroy]

I use that feature a shocking amount for Switch one when I'm traveling and Henry wants to play like a multiplayer game on Switch. And that is one of the big selling points of Switch 2 is actually being able to use those as controllers and have it not be like almost, almost unusual.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Freshick]

You could like actually press the trigger buttons on the new Switch too, which is a real improvement. Yeah, I get the argument. And it is tough to make something that is going to work for all people. It just, it's just a little bit of a, like, I don't know, man, they have a pro controller. I guess that's your solution. And then these third party companies that are hopefully not based in China, if these stick around, will make grips and things like that. So, yeah, now they weren't letting you.

[Justin McElroy]

Sort of like, if there was a big new feature and I don't know they would necessarily agree with this. It's probably the mouse. The Game chat. Whoa. Okay. So I was thinking the new button, the Game Chat, like that they have prioritized chat to a point where it is a button that you press to, like, access it. And you couldn't mess with that. Right. That wasn't, like, on display.

[Russ Freshick]

No, I mean, you could. Well, the button was there. It wouldn't really do anything.

[Griffin McElroy]

And how was it?

[Russ Freshick]

It was great. It was a great button.

[Justin McElroy]

Was it more of a nubbin?

[Russ Freshick]

It kills me because you do need a subscription service to use the button. If you.

[Griffin McElroy]

Amazing.

[Russ Freshick]

If you press the button and you're not subscribed to Nintendo Switch Online, it just pulls up an ad for how great Nintendo Switch Online is.

[Justin McElroy]

That's great. I love that shit, man. I love it when my. When the Pluto button on my remote does that too. I love. It's like, hey, don't you want to subscribe to Pluto? We got a whole button for. No, thanks.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah, so I don't know. I personally don't view game chat as, like, a major feature because, like, it's kind of table stakes at this point. But.

[Justin McElroy]

Okay, wait, see, this is what I want to talk about. I want to talk about this because I feel like if you are, to me, I kind of got what they're going for. And I don't. Or at least I think I do. And I don't know if it will work, but I think that this is at least the idea. And since we have, like, our kids have gotten old enough to play games, like Griffin and son Henry and my daughter Charlie have played games, like, pretty sporadically. Right. And Charlie will play with her friends. It's a communal thing. Right. Like, we've seen Minecraft do that robust stuff. I think that it. If you. If I as a parent knew that, like, we could put them in the Nintendo ecosystem, and I knew that the kids. And it's really easy to talk with your friends, and it's recognizing that, like, the game is something you're doing while you're doing something else, but it's like, actually making that easy to a point where I could link up Henry and Charlie one time and they could chat to each other without Griffin and I setting up. Which right now what it is, is us, like, calling each other on Facebook, messenger or something. Whatever app you know is open at that time. Then we'll connect them that way and then they're playing on. Sometimes it's like three or four devices before you get this all, like, going. Yeah. So I think that if. If I think that they're trying to get ahead of a market that is. Is playing games in maybe like a different way than we did when. When they tried game chat before.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I think that. I think that's true. I think a few problems come up along the way. One is a big if of will a Nintendo Internet thing just naturally work or will your kids be running to you screaming because it's not working and they don't know how to find is.

[Justin McElroy]

This a zero or a capital O in my friend code?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I think there's that. I think there's also the reality of kids are younger and younger in knowing how to use Discord and things that seem really complicated to us or to someone designing this system. Don't realize that if you actually just hand a kid an iPhone at like 9 or 10, they're going to know how to do a fair amount of this stuff already without any help or support. I think there's like, the question of do you want your kid being able to do that?

[Griffin McElroy]

But, like, right.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

There are a lot of kids.

[Justin McElroy]

I mean, no.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Is the. I mean, like, yeah, no, not at all. Right.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

But. But I think when you, when you get like, when you narrow this down to like, okay, parents who are going to be protective in that way, who also are familiar with the Nintendo brand, who also have kids who are not just going to circumnavigate it, but are smart enough to use like, it's a really small window of people versus people, like adults who are just going to use Discord.

[Russ Freshick]

And let me, let me add this as well. On PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Xbox platforms, the idea of game chat already exists and doesn't require a subscription service. You can chat with your friends, play any game you want. You don't have to be in the same game together and just have a chat going, a party chat going, and it doesn't require a subscription. You won't get.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Is that true? You don't need PSN or Xbox Live?

[Justin McElroy]

Correct. Guys, I feel like you're kind of like you've missed the metaphorical value of having it in the device. If we're talking about what can be done. You have always been able to pick up your phone and call your phone. But I'm saying while you're watching it.

[Russ Freshick]

In the device of the PlayStation, it's in the device of the Xbox. Like it's built in.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah. Fresh is saying, like game chat, just not new.

[Justin McElroy]

The surface level where it is surfaced is different. Right. Like you're. You're right. Like, that is a thing that has been in there, right? It is very different from I push a button, I'm talking to my friends. Right. That's what I'm saying is the way it has been prioritized, metaphorically, by attaching this like, button and part of the press conference to it. Like, I feel like if they're looking at how popular the switch has been, right? And they're like, the one thing that we wish we could change, we're going to keep almost everything the same. The one thing that we wish we could do better.

[Russ Freshick]

No, that's a fair point.

[Justin McElroy]

I don't know. I still don't. I'm still not saying it's going to work. I'm not so stupid.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I agree with you in that sense that it's just such a big if of the software. If this ends up being the problem for me right now is it looks like just copy paste of Discord and if it truly is something where you hit that button and there is a group of 15 friends that are your go to friends and when you hit that button, you're thrown into a room where you will always be talking to them. It literally is as simple as hit the button and you're there.

[Russ Freshick]

And I mean, you'll need to add people. It's not gonna like automatically.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I don't know. I'm saying what is my best version of it? Which is it should be as painless as possible and easy.

[Russ Freshick]

You want to be in a game chat with 15 friends, that's your best version.

[Griffin McElroy]

That does help.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

You know what I mean? What I'm saying is I don't want it to be. If this truly is as natural as any other Nintendo thing, it shouldn't be like Discord. It should be like, hey, I can. Exactly what I was describing. Like, I hit that button and I am here with my family and we're having a nice time.

[Griffin McElroy]

I would love to hear from what Russ thought was the big transformative feature of the mouse. Did you actually get to play anything in mouse mode?

[Russ Freshick]

I played two things in mouse mode. I played Metroid, which I know you don't really care about, and I played welcome Park.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Nice.

[Justin McElroy]

No, no, no.

[Griffin McElroy]

I agree with Russ.

[Justin McElroy]

Metroid's Metroid. Tell me about this welcome Park.

[Griffin McElroy]

I didn't know Metroid. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention. Was a mouse equipped game Metroid Prime 4.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Russ Freshick]

Metroid Prime 4 is extremely mouse equipped, such that at any given time, you could either use mouse mode or, like, hold two or two joy cons, like, normally and, like, switch back and forth. So the second the game notices you're using mouse mode, it'll just switch to mouse aiming.

[Justin McElroy]

How did that feel?

[Russ Freshick]

Which is pretty wild from an how to feel. From an accuracy standpoint, fucking fantastic. Like, incredible. Totally responsive. Incredibly accurate from a pressing button standpoint, I'm a little concerned because if you think about a joy con and you put a joy con on its side, try pressing the face buttons in that scenario. Oh, yeah, it's a problem. There are. They're like, activating like, the ball.

[Justin McElroy]

Does this. Does this feel good? Are you okay? Let me ask you this. Okay. If you're playing something in mouse mode. Right. If you're playing with a computer, like the, like, the number one thing you would be doing is clicking, like a left mouse button with an index finger, right?

[Russ Freshick]

Yes.

[Justin McElroy]

What's the, like, main action? Like, what's the shoot?

[Russ Freshick]

Is. Is that bumper button? It's the.

[Justin McElroy]

Does that feel good?

[Russ Freshick]

Like, that feels good. It might be the.

[Justin McElroy]

Sorry, I keep doing this.

[Russ Freshick]

I know. I see you.

[Justin McElroy]

The listener can't see it. It's just.

[Griffin McElroy]

No, you do look like the fucking Crypt Keeper every time.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

I'm gonna stop doing it.

[Russ Freshick]

Maybe the one button that feels good to press while in mouse mode is that bumper. So at least they nailed that part of it. But I do have concerns. Yeah. For the other buttons that might be required. It just doesn't feel super natural because it just, like the thinness of it and where your hand rests. It's just a little tricky to, like, hit any other button on there. That being said, like, you know, it didn't feel. I didn't feel like I was constantly needing to reach those buttons when I was playing Metroid Prime 4 and with welcome park, which is obviously the much more anticipated game for people that don't know. It's basically like a tech demo for all the features in the Switch 2. Those games were like, move a UFO to dodge the Asteroids. And so you really weren't even pressing any buttons. You were just like, tell me why.

[Griffin McElroy]

Why are they charging for it?

[Justin McElroy]

Why are they charging for it?

[Russ Freshick]

I have no.

[Justin McElroy]

You are. I. You are a bit. Hey, Russ, can I say something to you? Right now? You are on real ass, like, television networks that are talking about business about video games. They bring you on as the person who's like, explain this Shit to us. So, Russ, I'm asking you as a friend. I don't know if I have to pay your rent.

[Russ Freshick]

Bloomberg want the honest answer?

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Freshick]

The honest answer is I spent. I had an interview with Bill Trenin, who's VP at Nintendo, and I spent about seven minutes asking him very direct questions about the overall pricing of the Switch, the pricing of the games, so on and so forth. And I kept asking and he kept seeming a little uncomfortable about it until PR told me to stop. That's what happened.

[Griffin McElroy]

Great, great, great.

[Russ Freshick]

So I probably would have gotten there, but.

[Justin McElroy]

Okay. Did it feel like we've been doing this while? Does feel like maybe a decision that NOJ made that no way. Is like. I don't know why every.

[Russ Freshick]

Quite honestly, I think practically every decision when it comes to like major decisions come from noj.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh yeah, baby. I don't think calling anything obviously Nintendo.

[Russ Freshick]

Of America is making big marketing decisions for the region.

[Griffin McElroy]

Sure.

[Russ Freshick]

But broadly speaking, if it's like a global like hey, are we charging for this or not? It's gonna come from the head office. And yeah, look, I'll be honest, what I played of Nintendo park, pretty fucking fun.

[Griffin McElroy]

It looks great.

[Russ Freshick]

It's actually legit fun. And there's like, there's a mini game where you are moving the mouse across a line and you are trying to guess where the strongest vibration is. And so it's like this weird.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's got big one two Switch energy, man.

[Russ Freshick]

It does feel like one, two Switch. I mean if there's like a party game element right now I only played it in single player, but if there's like a multiplayer element, a lot of these minigames would be like legit fun in multiplayer.

[Griffin McElroy]

So yeah, I was hoping. I was holding out hope for a Nintendo Land too. Oh yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

So the answer is because they can is that. I think the answer is because.

[Russ Freshick]

I don't know, it just feels of like for something they include in with.

[Justin McElroy]

Something else or include with the Nintendo account, you know, it's like you're trying to incentivize that anyway in the way.

[Russ Freshick]

The like the goodwill that Sony got from Astro's playroom being like a thing, it just it totally vexing that they needed that extra $10 for whatever they're going to sell. Like crazy.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's so weird.

[Justin McElroy]

It's so weird.

[Griffin McElroy]

Anyway, can we talk about other games you played? Did you get to play Donkey Kong Bonanza?

[Justin McElroy]

Can I touch. Can we talk about the mouse for a second?

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah, sure.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Because we didn't really. I Wanted to float this thought because I've been thinking a lot about. I've been messing around with a lot of like the, the. That this form factor right. With the handheld gaming form factor and I, I think that power wise and, and like the usability wise it. It will be outpaced pretty quickly by a lot of these devices. They're coming out at a really rapid pace and they don't have the same standards that Nintendo has to live up to. But the ability to play mouse based games in a portable form factor could be like really, really major in a way that where like it makes it the device because like there's a. That's the one thing that's holding me back is if I'm thinking about like a game for travel or whatever. It's. It's just. It can't be something like I'm not gonna put something on my Steam deck that's like. Feels better as a mouse and keyboard.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Or even like a mouse based things like, even stuff like Balatro or things like that where it feel nicer to play with.

[Griffin McElroy]

I mean Civ is kind of like the obvious. If you like Civ, that would be my concern. I agree with you, Juice. I think that that would be so rad.

[Justin McElroy]

There's a big chunk of mouse based PC games that I think that they could release on Switch that would look great and haven't been done to death on consoles yet.

[Griffin McElroy]

I agree with that. I also however know Nintendo's track record with kind of like specialty hardware stuff and their ability to court third party publishers into supporting that. And the fact is it is not a mouse and keyboard based system. It is maybe a mouse based system. So they are going to require some sort of hybridization of like with the left Joy Con plugged in you can do some stuff and then with the mouse you do the mouse stuff. And that's going to require like no short amount of.

[Justin McElroy]

So I'm actually grif. I'm actually thinking less mouse and key. I'm actually not talking about mouse and keyboard games because like by and large a mouse and keyboard game I think is better served by dual thumbsticks. Right. I'm talking about a mobile interface.

[Russ Freshick]

Clarify what you just said. Cause a mouse and keyboard game isn't necessarily better with dual thumbsticks.

[Justin McElroy]

Okay.

[Griffin McElroy]

If it has to be portable in a portable handheld gaming console, then what.

[Justin McElroy]

I'm saying is there's. I do not find myself wishing that I had a mouse and keyboard to control first person or third person a shooter. Right. I don't want that, but I do wish I had. Like for deck building games, for example. Is the massive one right? Like it would just feel better. I hate poking cards and dragging it with my finger. I feel shitty.

[Russ Freshick]

I think to address what Griffin just said about the third party support, my impression is it seems relative. Who? I'm not a game developer, quite honestly, but it seems relatively easy to just program a mouse, especially if your game is already designed for it. A mouse functionality such that I agree that you might not see a ton of first after a couple years. A ton of first party games coming out. I think you will see a ton of third party games coming out that will support the mouse if you want to use it and if it makes sense.

[Griffin McElroy]

Interesting.

[Russ Freshick]

I just don't think it's that hard to implement. Like that's my read on it. I could be dead wrong. But I think you will see it.

[Griffin McElroy]

I would love to hear about some of the other games you played, specifically the new Donkey Kong game if it was hands on at this event.

[Russ Freshick]

I thought you wanted to hear about Dragon Drive.

[Griffin McElroy]

No, Donkey Kong Bananas. Like Dragon Drive. Obviously a wild one to include Dragon Drive hit like at peak Nintendo ass energy during that direct when it was like, oh, they got a new. Oh, they did a new arm.

[Russ Freshick]

It's like, oh, okay.

[Griffin McElroy]

Nintendo's did a ditto arms again. That's fun. That's cool.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah, no, I didn't actually play Dragon Drive. I watched someone fight Dragon Drive looks. And according to Chelsea, yeah, it's not great, but that's okay.

[Griffin McElroy]

But Donkey, I have learned firsthand that trying to shoot a basketball using Joy Con motion controls is a non starter. It does not feel amazing.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah, we'll talk about Donkey Kong because I played that and quite enjoyed it. So Donkey Kong Bonanza. And it's spelled like banana, but Bonanza. When I first saw the trailer, and I'm curious if you guys got the same perspective, didn't you just think like, oh, this is just like Mario Odyssey with Donkey Kong.

[Griffin McElroy]

I thought it was Odyssey until I saw that ape.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah, but even when you saw the ape, didn't you think like, okay, they just slotted in?

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, I figured it was doing destructibility as a big feature was what I thought it was. It seemed like kind of a Red faction was the impression I got. But that might have been wishful thinking on my part.

[Russ Freshick]

No, no, you were spot on, Justin. You. You. You got it. It is. It feels like a Hulk game is what it feels like.

[Griffin McElroy]

You are like, oh, fuck yeah.

[Russ Freshick]

Kind of let loose in these environments. And Donkey Kong's eyes are like that of a. Like a true obsessive. He needs this. Whatever the material is, it's like gold banana material. He needs it. He's obsessed. Yeah, it's his cocaine. He's obsessed with it. And you go around like fucking Hulk or like the Tasmanian Devil just fucking wrecking everything in reach. Every single button except for one, there's a jump button. And then every button and every trigger triggers some sort of fuck shit up action where he's slamming the ground or punching a wall or throwing a rock or ripping rocks out of the wall. Everything is destructive. Like everything is focused on destruction. I wouldn't say everything's destructible. It's not like you can, you know.

[Griffin McElroy]

Level the entire level, take the thing to the studs.

[Russ Freshick]

But I was of what I played kind of blown away by how much of the environment was destructible. And it was all happening very, very quickly, such that it was clear this was not something that could have happened on the switch. Hardware, like, much more involved than anything I would have seen.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'm glad to hear that. Very excited. I think both my kids are going to like this game a lot. Why the fuck is it coming out a month after the launch? Obviously games, there's no telling how hard it is to get them across the finish line, but you would think like a month.

[Russ Freshick]

I think it's done.

[Griffin McElroy]

From being a launch to my interpretation.

[Russ Freshick]

Is I think it's done. I think the reason they're doing that is because it's going to be a pretty light year from a first party standpoint and they want to spread things around. Okay, that's my interpretation. Because people, they expect people, when they buy the console, they're gonna buy Mario Kart, that's the system seller for them. And Mario Kart's gonna take them a chunk of time. And then by the time Mario Kart is starting to wane or whatever July hits, they buy what else it's not.

[Justin McElroy]

It's also different quarters.

[Russ Freshick]

Also different quarters that could be true.

[Justin McElroy]

You know, you're in the business, boy.

[Russ Freshick]

Over here. We need you on the BBC.

[Griffin McElroy]

Get you up on there.

[Russ Freshick]

Yep.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, I can make.

[Justin McElroy]

I can lie. Lie.

[Griffin McElroy]

Did you play Mario Kart World?

[Russ Freshick]

I did play Mario Kart World. Fun as fuck. Super fun.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh, good.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

That's nice.

[Russ Freshick]

I'm not a.

[Griffin McElroy]

Did you get to fuck around with like the open world?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

9 out of 1. Go back and tell us about that.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

What's the point? 1. What more can Mario do? For you.

[Russ Freshick]

So I'm not a huge Mario Kart fan. I like those games, but I'm not like, oh, I'm obsessed, and I'm gonna play it all in my spare time. I think most people are like that. I think it's a great party game, but not necessarily a game you would spend a lot of time in outside of that. It does feel like they're trying to flesh out the, like, for lack of a better term, single player experience with that open world, like you can between matches. And if I had to guess, they didn't show this, but I have to guess. I think there's a dedicated, like, open world exploration mode in. So at some. I think it'll be something like a Forza Horizon, if you will, where you're in this environment and you're unlocking characters and costumes and doing, like, side fun, side challenges and things like that. To add to the depth of, like, why this is an $80 game. It feels like, apart from the fact that they can sell it at $80 and it'll sell, I think they will make it pretty meaty. What I played there was like, 34 playable characters. You could play as the fucking coin purse from Super Mario Land. Like, there's some deep cut shit in there that's cool.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, sure.

[Russ Freshick]

They're just showing in the demo, so it feels very robust. The actual driving, to me, being like a kind of a layman, felt very, very similar to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. The maps were much, much bigger. Like, the tracks felt like much more wide ranging. And because it's all open world, you can have a track that's like, you start in the snowy Alps and you go down into the valley, and then suddenly you're underground because you're, like, mixing and matching biomes within the same track.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right.

[Russ Freshick]

So that's really fucking cool.

[Justin McElroy]

It's really interesting thinking about this in terms of, like, the Mario Kart announcement seemed very surprising. Right? But I mean, was it?

[Russ Freshick]

How was it surprising?

[Justin McElroy]

Well, no, no, no. Not the Mario Kart announcement. To me, the open world.

[Russ Freshick]

Oh, yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

That was a big departure. Right. It's interesting when you look at Bowser's Fury.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Because I feel like Bowser's Fury, in hindsight, was really even more of a test case than we knew. I think it was really Nintendo saying, like, how can we. Let's, like, practice this? Like, let's see. Because if you look at it, it didn't make a bunch of sense in their strat, like, overall strategy, but it really feels more like a Test case. Now, in hindsight, where with. With Zelda too, I would argue Zelda probably started it. It's like, hey, we made this an open world. How do we shift these other franchises to that? And like this it seems like the next. The next.

[Russ Freshick]

And I think they see the play times of those games. They see like Zelda play times and they're like, oh, how do we port this over? And the more playtime someone's spending in it, like, I could easily see them launching like car passes and things like that. In Mario Kart world, where people are continuing to spend money in this thing a year or two in advance after this.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right.

[Russ Freshick]

You know, I think that's the incentive it would be.

[Justin McElroy]

I feel like it would. I don't know. They're. They're missing, I think the value they could have captured by making it more of a social thing, by lowering the price a lot. Like, this is not going to be. If you want something where you're going to be like. It's more of like a social space hangout thing. I think it's got to be a lot cheaper than 80 bucks.

[Russ Freshick]

So they. So you're right. But they are working on it. We didn't see it and it wasn't even talked about, but they have been working on an mmo, a Nintendo made MMO for years. There was like a play test of it a couple years ago. I think that is their solution for solving that problem. Who knows? That might be like free to play. And then there's like in app, whatever currency stuff. So I think that might be their solution to that.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

How much credit do you think I should get for these cool new video games?

[Griffin McElroy]

A lot, I think.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah, probably a lot.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

That's what I thought because like, I think we all remember five years ago I wrote a letter to Miyamoto that said, yeah, give me Forza Horizon, Red Faction, Guerrilla Nintendo now.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And I was out of ink, so I did cut the letters.

[Griffin McElroy]

And you wrote some pretty threatening shit.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah. It wasn't gonna have to bring up, but it did move the needle.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Right. It seems like it worked.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

The only weird thing about the switch I would say that I could think of is that we have no idea how much it'll cost. Yeah, that's it. That's actually the. The sort of big thing is it could cost anywhere. I'll tell you this. But it's not gonna cost less than $350, 450. I don't. Well, it's certainly not gonna cost less than $450. Correct, Griffin? I think it's gonna cost less than that for sure.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah. I mean as of right now, the tariffs on Vietnam, where they produce, Nintendo produces their consoles are 46%. Which is a lot, I'd imagine.

[Justin McElroy]

As a business reporter, would you say more than 40? Less than 50. Russ, to give people sort of a basic.

[Russ Freshick]

Generally considered more than 40 but less than 50. Correct. Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

If people. 45%.

[Griffin McElroy]

Pretty much crunching the numbers on that. I'm getting 657 on my calculations, which is rough. That's a lot. That's quite a bit.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Travel back and forth across some different things, make it even more complicated pretty quickly.

[Justin McElroy]

I don't think that's possible, Plant. Honestly, the original chart was generated by AI. I don't see how this could be any less complicated.

[Griffin McElroy]

We're in PlayStation 3 launch territory, gang. And this thing does not have cell powered processing.

[Justin McElroy]

So you're gonna have to get a second job. But the joke is we don't have any other jobs either. It's just kind. Right, right, right. Is the gimmick.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I think the bad thing is I think 450 was the ceiling and they knew that and now they're like, well, shit.

[Russ Freshick]

Well, they were charging 500 for the bundle, but.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right. Yeah. Russ, was there anything else from the event that you wanted to touch on?

[Russ Freshick]

I mentioned this in Rusty's, but every room that we walked into, they would have people clapping at us, which is a very bizarre experience when they're just there to play video games.

[Griffin McElroy]

So weird.

[Russ Freshick]

I want to play. I want to mention I played Breath of the Wild and Tears of the kingdom in 60fps and that feels fucking gorgeous.

[Griffin McElroy]

Is it the. So this is. Is that. Was that the switch to Enhanced Edition or was that just the regular edition of those games running at a faster frame rate?

[Russ Freshick]

I don't know. I don't think. I think you need. In order to get the frame rate increase, I think you need to pay for it or you need to be subscribed to Nintendo Switch Online. I don't think it'll automatically update. There are titles that will automatically update for free. Mario Odyssey being one of them, will update some aspects of the game for free. But I think with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, if you want to playing at 60fps, 4K, whatever resolution it is, you will need to pay for the upgrade, which I.

[Griffin McElroy]

But some of. God, that's so fucking confusing, man. Because like the thing that Henry took away from this most is that Kirby and the Forgotten land is Getting new content.

[Russ Freshick]

It is with $20 paid, whatever it is.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right. So it is with that. Which is, like, fine. Like, I'm not. I'm accustomed to paying for dlc. To a certain extent.

[Russ Freshick]

It's a little weird that they're doing it for just, like, resolution and performance.

[Griffin McElroy]

That feels bad.

[Russ Freshick]

Their justification, whether this is whatever is that it now has Zelda notes in the app, which allows you to. I guess there's new voiceover stuff from Zelda within the app. Only in the app, not in the game. But it does have a feature that I was pretty enticed by, and I think it'll allow you to actually find all the koroks without ruining your life. Because I think you can use the app to, like, help you guide to the Korok.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It just talks to you. Right.

[Russ Freshick]

And it talks to you in Zelda's voice.

[Justin McElroy]

It talks to you about. It recommends great books. That's how it gets you out of it when you're talking to your colleagues. To what extent was the absence of a big new Mario felt? Because I feel like there was a sense. I think I was kind of waiting for it the whole time, you know, to drop the big new Mario, and it wasn't there. How was that vibe?

[Russ Freshick]

I think Donkey Kong Bonanza was obviously their solution to that problem. Donkey Kong Bonanza, I think, gets you, like, 70% of the way to, like, kind of scratching that itch, but obviously isn't the full on. Like, holy shit.

[Justin McElroy]

That's why the launch date thing hits worse with Donkey Kong. It's like, you're Donkey Kong, dude. You need to be there. Day one. We would wait for Mario, but, like, you're Donkey Kong. If that's the launch game, like, you got to be there.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

Odyssey wasn't a launch game, though, right? Odyssey.

[Russ Freshick]

Odyssey was not. It was a couple months after. Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Zelda was a very long time since Odyssey. Like, it's been a very.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh, God. Believe me, I know.

[Russ Freshick]

There definitely do. I don't think this is going to happen this year, but I definitely think there is more. There's probably one more first party game that's going to come out from Nintendo that they haven't announced yet. Air Riders is scheduled for this year. Kirby Air Riders. I don't personally care about Kirby Air Riders. I know Plant's excited.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I am in.

[Russ Freshick]

But I think that's the. Right now, that's the only, like, Q4 holiday title that they've announced. Like, a 2025 title they've announced. I think there must be one more. I don't think it's going to be the 3D Mario. I think that's probably a next year thing if I had to guess. But at this point like Nintendo's been announcing and then releasing games in a fucking three month span. You look at Echoes of Wisdom was announced in like June and it was out in September.

[Griffin McElroy]

So I was speaking of shocked when they announced the release date for the switch two being June 5th.

[Russ Freshick]

Oh really?

[Griffin McElroy]

Which is shocked. I thought for sure it was going to be a holiday.

[Russ Freshick]

Oh yeah, no, a lot of the rumors were pointing to about that timing. Oh like. Yeah. What's up Justin? You seem torn.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Natalie and Brugly over here.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, it's so we can't, we can't preorder it.

[Russ Freshick]

Correct.

[Justin McElroy]

I don't think they're having problems selling them.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah, they'll be fine.

[Justin McElroy]

That's going to be fine. I think what will be, what I think is going to be really probably will end up being the biggest story of the Switch too is this weird pricing situation, right where they have, they announced a price and now we don't really know. Like obviously these tariffs have not been formally like we, we don't know if they're going to be rolled back. They could change it any minute. But if, if Nintendo starts doing pre orders they're kind of locked into a price. Like there's a couple different realities where like Nintendo charges a lot more because they have to. Right. They're saying like look, you see this, we have to do it.

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

And then the situation changes and then it's like well we've already normalized this price. Like do we cut it back to react? I don't, I don't know.

[Griffin McElroy]

I think they hold off just based on the fact that like this imagine it's you know, 10 years ago. Any other administration, the idea like when a game company announces the price and release date of their console, that shit is etched into tablets taken down from the high heavens from God himself. Right. And now it's a situation where it's like, well if it, if it stays this way, like we can't do it for 450. But nothing else about the tariff situation has stayed that way for longer than like 48 hours. So it's hard to like, it's hard to imagine them kind of like committing to that, knowing that the sort of volatility of this, this sort of insane.

[Russ Freshick]

Economic system, I think they will frame it as some sort of to account for the global trade whatever the price is $600 just for argument's sake, price is $600, but make it very clear that it's the reason the price is $600 is because of this thing. And if things change on that front, seemingly in a permanent way, the price will normalize too.

[Griffin McElroy]

But they can't do pre orders correct until that. Right. Like if they start Pre orders at 600 and then the tariffs get rolled back, those people that paid $600 have paid $600. There's no rectify. Best Buy is not going to be like get you back your 150 dog. No problem.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I think the thing is exactly like Griffin said, which is this is a month and a half away from when they're going almost two months from when the thing actually releases. This is changing on a 24 to 48 hour basis. There is no world in which the terraces they exist today are the same on May 1st. That's not to say that they couldn't be worse or better, I don't know. But they will be 100% different, that's for sure. There's already signs of that being the case. I also think that Nintendo is smart enough to not have to say the thing that you said fresh of hey, here's why we raised the price. If they have to raise the price, it will be after car manufacturers are raising the cost of their cars by 10k, 20k. Right. So I think that they would hold off on raising that price until the subtext becomes text across the entire economy.

[Griffin McElroy]

I would also like to remind listeners that we do record this show in advance of when it comes out. But not a joke. Not a joke like it could seem.

[Justin McElroy]

Absolutely.

[Griffin McElroy]

When this thing comes out, who the fuck knows where we're at.

[Justin McElroy]

This has been a very long discussion and we could talk for longer, but I think we do need to wrap.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It up and we have a hell of a game to talk about.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, no kidding.

[Justin McElroy]

Speaking of Russ, do you want to address the game after the break?

[Russ Freshick]

Yeah, sure. So you guys are going to be talking about a game called Blueprints, which is a first person kind of Myst style puzzle game with a lot of secrets in it. I was pretty excited about this game. It's been described to me as like the new animal. Well, if you will. And I actually started playing and found that I really couldn't play with a lot of confidence because the game is incredibly color sensitive. There are a lot of colors, even more colors as you go deeper is my understanding. And it was creating some problems because a lot of the puzzles in the game are Very subtle. And if I don't know when colors are important for a puzzle, it really messes with me. There was a moment where I made the total wrong decision because I was like, I for sure have green rooms in my house. I did not have green rooms in my house. It's like a very basic level. So a couple things I want to mention. One, if you go into Settings, there's a settings option and in there is accessibility and they do mention colorblind mode in there and it's grayed out and they say I have a node underneath it, saying, hey, we know how important this is, we are working on it, but as of right now it is not in the game. I don't know how long it's going to be until it is in the game, but I wanted to make that clear. A, for colorblind people like me, obviously you, I think will have a lot of difficulty playing this and B, given the fact that it is such like a secret heavy game. I don't have a lot to contribute and I also don't necessarily want to like totally blow up the experience for myself. Not that these guys are going to give spoilers, but without having really any context of like where the game goes, it didn't feel like it made a lot of sense for me to participate. So I actively said I didn't want to participate in the B segment of the show where they are talking about the game because I really have only like scratched the very, very surface.

[Justin McElroy]

Hey Russ, to what extent does Steam and other digital platforms like Surface that kind of information?

[Russ Freshick]

Oh, like whether it's supported, like is.

[Justin McElroy]

There a. I've never really looked for it. Is there like a warning on games.

[Russ Freshick]

Or like a system wide warning? Obviously there is like a couple things. One, Steam supports, you know, returns after. If you only play a game for under two hours you can just return it. But I've never seen like system wide games. Obviously for people that it's like a real concern. Certainly do your research before playing any game. But yeah, you know, we've talked a little bit about accessibility in the past. This is not the first time I've experienced it. It is one of the first times in a long time where it was like so integral to the game that I really couldn't participate. But again, I would reiterate that it's very clear to me that the developers realize how integral it is and seem to be working on it. I don't know how long it'll be, but that's sort of like a long preface to say I will not be in the second half of this episode.

[Justin McElroy]

While Russ is away. The us Will play. You can say the next episode's better.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It's called Nawinta, and you gotta play it.

[Justin McElroy]

All right, let's take a break, and we'll be back right after this. Bye, Russ.

[Russ Freshick]

Bye.

[Griffin McElroy]

I feel like this could get out of control very quickly, and I feel like one. We make a promise up front that we're not gonna spoil anything.

[Justin McElroy]

It's impossible. Go ahead.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's impossible to spoil something.

[Justin McElroy]

It's impossible to not spoil something just by talking about it. You're gonna contextualize the game in a way, you're giving things away already. I already know five puzzles just from listening to you talk.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay, so Russ is still with us in spirit, which I can.

[Justin McElroy]

Sorry.

[Russ Freshick]

Yes.

[Justin McElroy]

Okay. Okay. He's out.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay. You've purged him out. Blueprints is one of the most exciting, best, like, most consuming games I've maybe ever played.

[Justin McElroy]

Goodness.

[Griffin McElroy]

And I've been so stoked to talk about it, even though I think it's going to be kind of a challenge, because there's not really a game that has existed like it before. It does have a lot of sort of familiar components, though. So maybe we start kind of there.

[Justin McElroy]

Okay. I want to try something because I think that. I think you could best understand blueprints like a single player board game. Right. Okay. Imagine blueprints like a single player board game. And your board for the game is a nine by five grid. And you always start the game at the bottom center position of it. And then you draw three cards, and each one of the cards is a room. After you've drafted, you can choose which room to play. Some rooms have a cost of resources that you've accumulated, hopefully in other rooms.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes.

[Justin McElroy]

But the important thing is that the orientation of these rooms and the assemblage of these rooms is randomly generated every time by you as you explore through the house. You're building this house as you draft your way through it.

[Griffin McElroy]

A touchstone that may be helpful for some folks is Betrayal at House on the Hill. If you have played that board game where you are placing the tiles down and building the house as you go, that is very much the system here.

[Justin McElroy]

Right. There are a truly dizzying array of interlocked puzzles, both mechanical and sort of like narrative in nature, that are all interlocked. But in order to fully maximize their abilities, a lot of times you're having to synergize the rooms that you're pulling. So you May need one room because of the effect that it can have on another to progress your understanding, overall understanding. And really that's the currency, right? Like that's the number one currency I think is understanding.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I'll layer one thing on top of that, which is it is a series of more challenging games to actually reach your goal. So your goal is to find the 46th room in a 45 room estate, right? In theory, at the beginning, you draft these rooms and you want to draw a line from the room that you start in to an antechamber on the other side of the house. So in theory, you could do that by just picking rooms that make that line from point A to point B. But added a layer, you have a limited number of steps that you can do and you have some locked doors. So now you have to start using rooms that do not actually give you as clear a pass and may actually terminate pass. But those rooms have the jewels or they have keys. So in theory, now the game is good, but as you get further, you reach rooms where the keys don't actually work. Okay, well now you need to find a computer terminal and to power the computer terminal. And suddenly it just keeps cascading on top of this where you are now, those are the first two or three layers. You're 30 layers deep of. Oh, but if I need to do that, I have to do this. And it's a bit of a give a mouse a cookie puzzle game.

[Griffin McElroy]

Now to add another thing. Yeah, and hopefully you're still hanging with this, right? This idea of every time you play the game, every in game day, you are starting over and building a new house with this randomized draft every time trying to solve the puzzles. You have to take fucking notes. You have to take screenshots nonstop.

[Justin McElroy]

You will need to take screenshots non stop, non stop. You will be mad at yourself.

[Griffin McElroy]

You'll be so pissed. So you don't know when the next time you'll see this puzzle again is. And you kind of got to have it like stored away from yourself.

[Justin McElroy]

Don't take screenshots nonstop. We were kidding about that. Because a lot of the stuff that you're going to encounter early on, you'll encounter a lot over and over again.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Until you take screenshots there. And don't write it down. Because the first five days I was on a plane for like four hours just writing down every little thing where I'm like, oh, well, there's a picture of a pawn and I wonder if I'm a pawn in the greater Scheme of things.

[Griffin McElroy]

So the game for the most part is how do I draft these rooms in a way where I can solve. Start to figure out what these puzzles are and start to solve them. Right. And it's hard when you start the game out. It's almost impossible to actually guarantee that you can make progress in any given run trying to make these two goals interlock. However, it is also a roguelite. And there are a lot of ways where you become more powerful, where you have more options. And that power curve, I think is more elegant and more satisfying than like any, like, RPG. Like my strength went up two points because you've been trying to get these two rooms to draft together for fucking 10 runs and it's killing you. And now you. But you just found this upgrade that is permanent that is going to facilitate that. And now you're making progress, which then leads to more puzzles and more upgrades and more like.

[Justin McElroy]

It is, in a sense, the dark souls of thinking.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's very good.

[Justin McElroy]

Rather than learning the enemies that you need to fight and getting really good at fighting those enemies because you fight them over and over again. What it really is is you're learning the vocabulary of this house and you're learning the way this house thinks and the way this house communicates with you. And that is what you are get. That is how you start to feel confident navigating this house because you know it so well. Because you've been in the rooms over and over again. So when you realize you've walked past the fucking thing that you've needed to look at 30 fucking times. Yeah. Then you really can savor it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

That's Justin, that's very elegant. Because the learning is the hook. I have bounced off other games that have been the animal wells that Fresh mentioned earlier or even Lorelei and the laser eyes. And what I really appreciate about this game is it is a puzzle game, but the vast majority of the times it is actually telling you how to solve its own puzzle. Yes, if you look around for the answer, it is happy to just literally hand it to you. But you have to keep your eyes open and you have to be curious.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's the thing. Because it's not going to hand it to you in the right order. Guaranteed.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Correct.

[Griffin McElroy]

You will find a hint that makes no fucking sense to you and won't until you find this room you've never seen before. Thirty hours into the game and you're like, wait a second. That has to do with this. And hopefully you've taken a screenshot.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

What's great about that, if you know this especially going in is, yeah, you can try to solve some of the puzzles and there are some that you can solve without those hints. There are a lot you can't. But often in puzzle games, I get to a point where I'm stuck on a puzzle and I bash my head against it and I just don't feel smart enough to solve it. And then I just walk away from the game where here I get to a puzzle and I can trust that, hey, I don't know the answer to this. I should just keep moving, just keep going and doing other things because eventually I will find an answer for this.

[Justin McElroy]

I really think that there is a. There is a. The learning curve of this game, I would say is steep, but short to get to like a point where you're enjoying it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

I think that right at the first, when you first start going. And this is not a knock against the game, but it's sort of like a heads up or a way that I wish I was more comfortable experiencing games at first. It's much more about just having your eyes open and looking around.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

And that's it. I mean, it's really like. And waiting for stuff to come to you. The pictures are obvious.

[Griffin McElroy]

You're gonna build some shit houses. Which is my favorite experience was when Juice and I were on tour and you would just out of nowhere, just be like, great fucking house. Great shitty. Because each room has a different number of entrances. It's so easy to lock yourself into a situation where you have drafted five rooms and then there's no more exits. And you're like, well, that's my run for the day. Okay, goodbye. But even then you learn something about those five rooms.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

That's the thing, right? Like, there were times where I built a house and I built a path that was maybe a room away from the antechamber on the other side and got a dead end. But I had an entire path on the left side of the estate that I could go kind of rebuild. And I knew I wasn't going to be able to make it far enough to get to the antechamber. But I went and just built, just to build, just to see what I could get. And I ended up discovering something that blew my mind. They completely reframed the game for me. And did that have anything to do with, in that run, getting to the goal? No. But that was. Honestly, looking back, that was when the game really clicked for me. Because then I started to realize it truly is not about just reaching the goal. It is about solving its greater mysteries.

[Justin McElroy]

What I feel like if I had to put a knock on blueprints, if I had to complain about something, it's that I feel, and this is more of a warning because once I tell you, it won't be a problem for you. But I feel like blueprints makes it feel like that you are playing against the passage of time or that you have a time limit or that like time must not be wasted in a way that is not accurate. Like you are seeing signage for, like there's a sale on this certain day. And it feels like I started thinking like, well, I got to be ready for that. Like, I gotta be ready for that day. I gotta be ready for that sale. I gotta have my stuff lined up. I gotta be ready. But like, it. That doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't matter. And it doesn't. And the passage of days was a lot more frustrating for me when I would have like dead end days like that. Because I. I thought the way that days are, like counting very definitively makes you feel like there's a time pressure and there's not. And I wish I had realized that earlier.

[Griffin McElroy]

There is. There is not a time pressure. I think that that is, I think the reason that that is there. And I agree with you. I also had that same feeling of frustration of like, well, if I don't get ready for this sale that is on one side for some reason, I'm gonna be fucked. I think the reason it does that is because this game's big trick is you think you understand the scale of it and then something happens and you realize that you don't. And there is not, I'll say definitively, there is not a game that has ever been made and released that pulls that off as many times sequentially as Blueprints has done in the like 120 hours that I have spent with it so far. It just keeps going.

[Justin McElroy]

You think one of my favorite concepts in games that I love to think about is the hand of the creator, right?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

That brings us joy to feel the creator in the work because they have put themselves into it and you can feel them guiding you. Like, when you are having a good time at a video game, a lot of times you can feel that creator present. They've thought about this. And a lot of times when you're not having fun, it's because you can feel like the creator of the game didn't really think about this experience, like what this would feel like. Right. Because they didn't put their There's a sense in this game where when you find something, sometimes it's so hidden that you. You can almost feel a prep. Like you can feel someone speaking to you. Like it's like that concrete. Like, yo, you found it. Okay, good, because I've been waiting for you to find it. And also 30 other things that have just kind of been floating around in your head have just like simultaneously clicked. And the pleasure of it was such. And Griffin saw this a couple times. I would set the video game down and just let the pleasure of that, like, wash over me because it is so perfectly orchestrated and satisfying and it keeps happening over and over and over and over again. And every time it happens, you think, well, that's the bottom.

[Griffin McElroy]

And it's like, wait, it is on some animal well shit. Which I do appreciate. I think that it is easier to solve the thing, like Chris said, like, it's easier to solve this stuff than it is in Animal well, because you will constantly. It shows its hand a lot if you are paying attention and you're looking around. But it is also on some animal shit where, like, I know the three of us are on different strata of. Of of the game. Yeah. And so, like, talking about the game is. Is, I think, pretty difficult. I think you will have a hard time chatting about this game with your friends until you have guaranteed that you all have reached a certain, like, checkpoint together.

[Justin McElroy]

I will say this, though, speaking of Animal well, and this I bounced off Animal well soon before I will bounce off this. This is a. This is a much more deliberate and orchestrated and like, laid out. There's a lot here, but I think it's more fairly laid out and more obviously signposted than an animal well, which I. It clicks more for me. It's just a personal.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I wanted to share a detail from a call I had with the creator of this game. And because you were talking about how it really feels like they are whispering to you and this will make a lot more sense as more people play the game. But everything in the game, again, can feel like a clue. So I'm on the call with him, right.

[Griffin McElroy]

And behind his Tonda Ras. Is that the name pronunciation?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I believe so. Or Tonda. Yes. So I'm on a call with him and he lives in LA and he used to work in the film industry. And behind him is a poster for Nightmare Alley, the original film from 1947. Right. And I'm like, oh, love that movie. And I think that's really interesting because Nightmare Ality is about a confidence man like Somebody who's kind of like creating illusions and tricking people. And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I hadn't thought about it, but, you know, like, everything feels like it's kind of part of the game. And then there were two other movie posters next to him, and I was like, oh, like, what's up? What's up with those? Like, those are old movies, but I don't know if they have anything in common with Nightmare Alley. And he's like, yeah, no, I don't like those movies as much. I really like Nightmare Alley, but I don't really like those as much. I was like, why? Why do you have them on your wall? He's like, oh, they were all released in 1947, and my address is 1947.

[Griffin McElroy]

So, like, that's what you're doing.

[Justin McElroy]

This is my dude. That's what you're saying.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I immediately just like, vibrated of. Holy moly. You're incredible like that.

[Justin McElroy]

You are.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

This game, it's.

[Griffin McElroy]

It. There's like nine different brilliant things about this game. The puzzles themselves are brilliant. The microcosmic puzzles, the bigger puzzles. The writing is fantastic. The story, once you start to unpack it is quite gripping. But it is the way that you have this one half of your brain that is thinking about this board game, drafting, deck building sort of mechanic, and that is keeping some plates spinning in your brain. And then you are also trying to figure out all these puzzles and how they all interact. And the way that your brain works as it is trying to do these two things at once keeps you from getting frustrated and locked in on either thing, right? Because in Animal, well, you're trying to solve puzzles and you aren't making any progress. You're stuck, right? But in blueprints, you have like this other game that is also going on, and if you keep playing that one, it's gonna move you along the path. On the other hand, right, there's a.

[Justin McElroy]

Meta layer, there's a couple different layers you can.

[Griffin McElroy]

How it. That it works.

[Justin McElroy]

When I had started talking about comparing this to Animal, well, yes, the thing that I wanted to say, and I really, I'm never this cat, but, like, you really, really, really shouldn't try to look up any help with this game because thinking about it, and I wonder if this is part of the idea. It would be almost impossible to extract information that you need without ruining many other things for yourself. And I swear to you, I am the first person to go to guides if I feel like something is, is. Is unfair or. I mean, I I have no qualms about it whatsoever. But I really, in this, in this one scenario, am telling you that you will ruin this experience for yourself. It is fair. It's there. It's not. It's very deliberate. It's there. Like, don't try to look.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I agree with you. To the credits and then maybe after that chat with friends.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's what I would say.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It does get to a point where you're going to want to.

[Justin McElroy]

I'm saying 100. That's a huge. I very much agree. I'm putting that in a separate bucket. I think talking to people about stuff, it's a lot easier for a friend to be like, okay. Griffin has had some very, like, weird, cautious, like, what do you know that I know? Help me try to figure out where you're at. So that's a lot easier, I think, than Googling.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes. It is my game of the year so handily right now. And I don't know what's on the horizon that could unseat it because it has truly had some of the most memorable moments, most satisfying, like, solutions. I can't stop thinking about it. Like, I've been having the dreams where, like, I'm rotating floor plans in my slumbers. It has really, really, really got its hooks in me. And I think it is a truly once in a generation.

[Justin McElroy]

Like, have you left the credits rolling?

[Griffin McElroy]

What's that?

[Justin McElroy]

Have you left the credits rolling? No, I left the credits. I left it on. When I left to go start, I left at the menu. And when I went back in, the credits were rolling. And I started watching the credits, the things that were being highlighted in the credits and watching, like, the different shapes in the credits, and none of it was anything but.

[Griffin McElroy]

You've lost your mind.

[Justin McElroy]

Could have been. Could've been something. You never know.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's. You know, I think listening to this, if this is your shit, if it sounds like your shit, it's gonna fuck you up, man. It's really, really gonna get you pretty good. And I am excited for more people to play it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And even if it's not your shit, try it. I believe there's a demo. Give it a shot.

[Griffin McElroy]

I don't think the demo is available anymore. I think it was up in Next Fest and then I pulled it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I strongly encourage people to check it out, no matter what. This is the game that feels like an exception to the. Even if you're not into the genre, because this is so not my thing normally. This is so normally what I bounce off of. And that Give it a try. And the rule is if you're getting frustrated, if you feel like it's impossible, literally just play one more day. There were so many times I was like, ah, I need a guide. There's no way I could figure this out.

[Justin McElroy]

I may have audibly text said out loud, fuck this game. I'm never playing this again. This fucking sucks. And then I did play another day. I was like, okay, that's much better. Yeah, it's easier now. I understand. This house is. It was just a bad house. Just had a bad house last time. No big deal.

[Griffin McElroy]

It is also, I think, fair warning just based on the critical reception to the game. Like, this is gonna be the game that people are talking about a lot this year. And so there is a certain element of if being a part of those conversations is important to you, which is why it is so disappointing and such a huge fucking bummer that our dear friend Russ Freshstick, who's this is absolutely his shit. Can't play the game right now.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I think we will do a spoiler episode at some point this year. I would like to talk like a full. How does this game work? Let's crack it open.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, that would be cool.

[Griffin McElroy]

We would have to separate it into chapters based on what strati you are.

[Justin McElroy]

Sounds very.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And I'm fine obviously being spoiled.

[Justin McElroy]

I'm going to make an executive decision to skip emails.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes, I think.

[Justin McElroy]

And we're going to go straight to honorable mentions. Have you guys played or watched anything else that you've enjoyed?

[Griffin McElroy]

Well, friend, this past weekend I took my wife and kids to see the Minecraft movie.

[Justin McElroy]

Ooh. Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

I will say this up front is that the teenagers have discovered irony and that is a challenge. I didn't realize what was happening. Packed, packed fucking house when we went to see it on a Saturday at.

[Justin McElroy]

2Pm Been making a lot of money. Very popular.

[Griffin McElroy]

Unsurprising. And there were a lot of teens and preteens sitting directly in front of us, talking the entire film, cutting up, joking. And also then at certain points, it seemed like everyone in the theater except for us would quote lines from the movie that had just come out two days ago.

[Justin McElroy]

So it's trailer lines. That's what the gimmick is that they are. This is a TikTok thing, right? People are getting thrown out of theaters.

[Griffin McElroy]

I know this now, but I did not know this when we went to see the movie. And the first time it happened, I looked at Rachel and was like, what the fuck is going? So it is very much that same Thing that happened when Minions. Oh, gosh, was it Minions? Yeah, Minions. Where kids would come dressed up in their Sunday best suits and tie when the movie let out and the lights came on and all these kids stood up, sure enough, they were all dressed in suit and tie. So I'm assuming this was the third or fourth time that they had seen this film that night. So, like, that gave it sort of a Rocky Horror energy that I was not expecting. I had a great fucking time at this flick, though, man. It couldn't be anything else. Like, it is. So, like, imagine how you would make a Minecraft movie and make it actually, like, extremely Minecraft and not like the 1993 Super Mario Bros. Where it's, like, lightly inspired. Like, imagine how you would do that and then think about how sort of, like, threadbare that would actually be, and then how you would solve for that is just put Jack Black in it. Like, deliver.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Have Jared Hess direct it and have.

[Griffin McElroy]

Jared Hess direct it and have Jack Black deliver lines in really, really, really silly ways. And that is enough. That's enough to hold the film together. Henry loved it. He's a big Minecraft player. There's a lot in there for kids like that. And it's like, it is not. The characters aren't the most fleshed out and the plot isn't anything at all. But if you just kind of, like, vibe with it. I had a pretty good time watching the Minecraft.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I'm happy that Jared Hess made Napoleon Dynamite a cultural phenomenon and then decades later, made Minecraft in a weird way. Also, a. Like, it's going to be a midnight movie. I think for years, the spongebob movie has become one in ways that, like, blows my mind when we show it at our theater in California. Sellouts. Like, I mean, people get so hyped for it. And I weirdly think that we will see this in, like, a decade, somehow be a cult movie, which is bizarre.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. It's also funny that, like, if you want to make money for your project, you got to get Jack Black. I feel like my. Our generation of people is, like, one of the few ones who are like, we found that one. He was good, right?

[Griffin McElroy]

We.

[Justin McElroy]

We kept him around. He's good, right?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Nailed it.

[Justin McElroy]

We did. With Jack Black, I finished the third season and I guess especially the final season, I guess. I don't know. That could be hearsay. You never know with this stuff. But White Lotus, the. It's just a really, really well written and acted and performed TV show. And the third season, which was like, I said ostensibly wrapped up the show. I kind of hope it does. It's very much. It makes it very clear what the show is about and what the show has been trying to do. And I think it sticks the landing in a really, really remarkable way. And this is. Each season has been about something else. I think the first season was very much focused on income inequality and sort of like an upstairs, downstairs thing. The second season was very much about sex and the power that has over people. And this is a season about death. So we've been hitting the big ones, right? Money, sex, and death. But the way that this is, it's really about the way people bring meaning to their lives and the power of spirituality and religion and the place that that has in a modern world. And it's a really thoughtful, nuanced take on that. Parker Posey is doing some incredible work. Jason Isaacs is doing some incredible work. They feel like people that I have known in my life in the way they sound, not necessarily in their socioeconomic standing, but it's wonderful. It's really wonderfully done. Walton Goggins is sort of like TVs Jack Black @ this point. Like, if you want to make money on something, you gotta get Goggins. It's great. It's. It's really well done. It's a fantastic show and it has a clear point of view. It's really well executed. And Mike White has been on Survivor, so. And he did really, really well. So what more do you need?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

One quick thing. One long thing, quick thing. Anne Shirley is now on Crunchyroll. It is an adaptation of Anne of Green Gables. Everybody should watch it because it's beautiful and you can watch it with your family longer thing. Children of Time Hoops.

[Griffin McElroy]

Whoa.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Have you read it? Do you know about this? It seems like so extremely your shit. Okay, so it's a. Well, really, it's the first in a trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky and it is a set in the future. Their Earth is absolute garbage. And scientists want to make sure that humans can survive and that humanity thrives in its own way. And they create, I believe it's called the Exaltation plan, where they are going out in seeding planets. And the idea is, hey, we have this, like, ark full of monkeys. We're going to shoot it into this planet that is somewhat Earth like. And we're also going to fire a virus into that planet that makes creatures evolve ultra, ultra rapidly. So in the span of like 50 generations, monkeys will evolve into humans. And once they get to a point where they can like communicate with the solar system. It'll ping our satellite and we will know, hey, we've created effectively a new group of humans. A new Earth goes terribly wrong. Monkeys get blown up. This all happens very early. But that virus still gets shot onto the seed planet and instead spiders become the dominant life form. And it is an entire sci fi universe about what would happen if spiders evolved at the pace that humans had. And like, how would society work if it was spiders instead of people? Which sounds at first on its face silly until you realize it is basically kind of a perfect metaphor for what if the Internet was sentient because spiders can communicate via web and it is like all about extrapolating that out to its like furthest extent. It is unbelievably thoughtful and creative and smart and like takes its premise seriously without being burdensome. And I am blown away by it. There are two more of them that are about other animals. I believe there's one about ravens or crows that came out recently that is kind of more of a metaphor for AI but the series is so far awesome. It had been recommended to me forever. I put it off forever and I am so glad I have started it. And again, that's called Children of Time.

[Griffin McElroy]

That sounds sick. I love alien spider shit.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Like spiders are good.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's absolutely my stuff.

[Justin McElroy]

Hey, what do we want to do next week?

[Griffin McElroy]

That's a really great question.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Hey, that's just us, me and you. Hoops. It's just.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, the boys.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh, that's right. Yes. Russ and I will be absent next week, but Chris and Justin are talking about a game I desperately wish I could be a part of.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I am so excited. We are talking about Promise Mascot Agency, which is the new game from the studio that did Bestie's favorite, Paradise Killer. And this game looks like Yakuza but with local mascots. I don't know how to describe it. It looks incredible.

[Justin McElroy]

Who wants to talk about the Patreon? Russ isn't here. That's normally his thing.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'll say thanks to the following members for joining the Besties Patreon and supporting this show. Stacy, Matt, Adam, Sue. That's some pretty straight over the plate.

[Justin McElroy]

Love that. Thanks, Russ.

[Griffin McElroy]

Thanks, Russ for that. You can [e-mail] thebesties Listen to the Resties episodes, listen to our monthly bracket bonus episodes and support our show because you all are the reason that we are able to make it. And yeah, patreon.com thebesties help us out.

[Justin McElroy]

That is gonna do it for us for this week on the Besties. Be sure to join us again next time on the Besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games.

[Russ Freshick]

Sa.