A Ghost In My Basement

Wed, Sep 20, 2023 Year 2, Summer 12

Al talks about Sprout Valley

Timings

00:00:00: Theme Tune
00:00:30: Intro
00:01:48: What Have We Been Up To
00:21:54: News
00:44:42: Sprout Valley
01:09:13: Outro

Eastward Octopia
Japanese Rural Life Simulator

Sprout Valley on Steam
Sprout Valley on Switch

Contact

Al on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheScotBot
Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot
Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/

Transcript

[00:00.000 –> 00:26.700] This video is made using the
[00:30.400 –> 00:37.840] Hello farmers and welcome to another episode of the harvest season. My name is Al. I’m Kevin
[00:37.840 –> 00:45.280] and we are here today to talk about cottagecore games. Before we get into it,
[00:45.280 –> 00:50.280] transcripts are available in the show notes and on the website. Get them if you want them.
[00:50.280 –> 00:59.400] Kevin, how you doing? Yeah, I’m doing okay. Well, I mean, this is probably where,
[00:59.400 –> 01:05.140] where we mentioned that we had just recorded a greenhouse episode before this. So if this is
[01:05.140 –> 01:10.000] low energy, that was much longer than we were. I was like, this is going to be like a 20 minute
[01:10.000 –> 01:14.960] episode. And then 20 minutes, 20 minutes in, we were just stopping talking about Spiderman.
[01:14.960 –> 01:23.040] Yeah, there’s some real dumb stuff in that greenhouse. But that’s okay, I’m hyping myself,
[01:23.040 –> 01:27.680] I’m bringing plenty of dumb stuff to this podcast episode recording too.
[01:27.680 –> 01:32.720] All right, so in this episode, I am going to talk about Sprout Valley because I have
[01:32.720 –> 01:36.440] been playing that and presumably Kevin will have some dumb questions for me.
[01:36.440 –> 01:37.760] Yeah, I will.
[01:37.760 –> 01:43.520] Yeah, so we’re gonna talk about that and there’s a whole bunch of news. Most of
[01:43.560 –> 01:47.640] reasonably small pieces of news, but there’s some chunky stuff as well. We’ll get into that.
[01:47.640 –> 01:50.760] But first of all, Kevin, what have you been up to?
[01:50.760 –> 01:58.520] Oh, okay. Actually, nothing too interesting this week. The usual. Snap is good. Tears
[01:58.520 –> 02:05.200] of the Kingdom is good. Oh, I beat the end of the Koga arc. I love Koga. He’s probably
[02:05.200 –> 02:06.320] my favorite character in that game.
[02:06.320 –> 02:10.880] That is a really good arc in Tears of the Kingdom. I did that before I did like any
[02:10.960 –> 02:15.400] of the other big story things because it was, I was fun just to like follow him around there.
[02:15.400 –> 02:20.680] Yes, it was. I happened to run into him before I even got a horse.
[02:20.680 –> 02:24.880] Who needs a horse in this game? Come on.
[02:24.880 –> 02:31.520] Yeah, you’re right. The one thing that I do love about the whole Koga thing,
[02:31.520 –> 02:37.360] I think an absolute stroke of genius. I don’t know if it was intentional or not,
[02:37.480 –> 02:42.360] they’d already been thinking about Tears of the Kingdom back then, but the fact that they
[02:42.360 –> 02:47.400] turned the ending of Koga where he falls into the hole and just tie it into his new story.
[02:47.400 –> 02:55.680] Oh, that was genius. Oh, it was beautiful. But yeah, Eagle Clan, it’s really fun. I love it.
[02:55.680 –> 03:04.280] Master Koga is great. Aside from that, the only thing of some note is I’ve hit year five in
[03:05.280 –> 03:14.280] Story of Seasons A Wonderful Life. You only have six years before you hit credits.
[03:14.280 –> 03:20.960] Yes. Well, the main credits. There are other credits. Don’t forget about the other credits.
[03:20.960 –> 03:25.840] Yeah. I mean, I already hit credits because you just say not the beginning.
[03:25.840 –> 03:31.000] That’s the first credits. You’ve got to do that before you do anything else if you’re
[03:31.000 –> 03:36.240] going to hit everything. Yeah, I already did that. So I’m going to hit the credits again.
[03:36.240 –> 03:40.640] I love that they kept that in the game, by the way. They could have easily removed that.
[03:40.640 –> 03:48.160] But no, they kept it in. It’s good fun. Yeah, it’s great. So the only, I mean,
[03:48.160 –> 03:53.920] my kid’s now like an adult roughly the age you were when the game started, which is interesting
[03:53.920 –> 04:00.000] to see. I’m going through faux parenthood here and it’s weird. I mean, parenthood is weird.
[04:01.000 –> 04:05.880] Well, yes, but I’m genuinely worrying if my kid’s going to want to inherit my farm or not.
[04:08.280 –> 04:20.520] Anyways, the one super notable thing that they do something just brutal to you. So I can’t
[04:20.520 –> 04:25.960] remember if it’s year four or year four. No, in year four, all the character’s hair starts to
[04:26.080 –> 04:31.480] gray. Like you start seeing everyone starts getting the salt and pepper gray hairs in there.
[04:31.480 –> 04:39.760] Year five, you’re getting older, so they take away permanently an amount of your stamina. Your
[04:39.760 –> 04:47.360] stamina bar goes down like a good chunk, too, because you are getting up in your years. You
[04:47.360 –> 04:54.160] can’t take it anymore. Oh, that’s it’s getting too real. But yeah, so hopefully soon I’ll actually
[04:54.200 –> 04:59.400] be able to hit credits of this game for once and I can report back on it. Although I don’t think
[04:59.400 –> 05:05.360] anything will ever top what I did for that episode. But that’s that’s all I’ve been up to. Oh, what
[05:05.360 –> 05:10.040] about you? What’s going on? I obviously have been playing Spirit Valley the last wee while.
[05:10.040 –> 05:24.080] And I’ve also been playing Hades. That’s a good game. Kind of. Yeah, it is. Look, I mean,
[05:24.080 –> 05:30.960] I’m going to do a proper discussion with this later. Probably for a greenhouse episode with
[05:30.960 –> 05:38.280] someone else. But like, I mean, my overall thoughts are probably going to be the same as
[05:38.320 –> 05:44.960] most roguelites, which is I like the combat. I like the primary loop. And I hate everything
[05:44.960 –> 05:51.960] else about the game. Well, hold on. What do you mean everything else? Because like, characters
[05:51.960 –> 05:56.800] are really good. Okay, the character stuff is fine, right? Like, but it’s not. I mean,
[05:56.800 –> 06:08.440] it’s weird in like, the story. It’s not a story. It’s more just like snippets from to
[06:08.440 –> 06:16.480] this world building, right? Like there isn’t a story as such, as there is snippets of characters
[06:16.480 –> 06:24.600] and kind of giving you some backstory and stuff like that. But there’s no like the story is you
[06:24.600 –> 06:30.400] escaping. Right? Like, that’s the story. And there’s nothing really to tell about that. So
[06:30.400 –> 06:36.320] they spend the rest of the time giving you these little, little bits and pieces as you go from
[06:36.320 –> 06:44.680] different people. Okay, fine. I don’t dislike that. But how do you think you’re going to stick
[06:44.680 –> 06:48.680] with it? Because I can comment on something here. But if you’re going to stick with it,
[06:48.680 –> 06:54.680] I won’t comment on probably going to stick with it. Okay. All right, then. Well, well,
[06:54.680 –> 07:01.280] I got so close to beating the first boss the other day, so close, frustratingly close. And
[07:01.280 –> 07:07.800] the thing that I really dislike about it is like, all of the things that I did, essentially
[07:07.800 –> 07:13.040] disappear, right? Sure. Fine. There’s stuff you get that can build up other things later on,
[07:13.040 –> 07:16.920] right? Fine. But the problem is, if you don’t get a huge amount of that each run,
[07:16.920 –> 07:22.440] it just feels like so demoralizing to go like, I was so close, because of these specific power
[07:22.440 –> 07:27.360] ups I got on this specific run. And the chances of me getting all those power ups again, very,
[07:27.360 –> 07:34.040] very slim. It’s just that I just don’t find that fun. Okay. I mean, all right. Yeah, no, I mean,
[07:34.040 –> 07:39.760] that’s, that’s your prerogative. You know, that’s subjective. That’s can’t argue. Absolutely. It’s
[07:39.760 –> 07:45.800] definitely subjective. And like, I, you know, I know that I know the reason why people like
[07:45.800 –> 07:48.880] these games. And I know the reason that this game is why it is, but that doesn’t mean that
[07:48.880 –> 07:57.280] I have to enjoy that. You know, I think that still, we’ve still, despite the number of rogue
[07:57.280 –> 08:02.120] lights that I’ve played, still the only one that I actively enjoyed playing was Cult of the Lamb.
[08:02.120 –> 08:13.480] Okay, it’s, see, that’s interesting, because Cult of the Lamb, very, well, at least gameplay combat
[08:13.480 –> 08:18.360] wise, that the stuff we’re talking about where the stuff doesn’t matter when you die, that feels
[08:18.360 –> 08:28.000] very, Cult of the Lamb feels very Hades-lite in that sense. But the kicker is, Cult of the Lamb
[08:28.000 –> 08:33.880] runs take what, five minutes? A Hades run can last you a half hour. Exactly. So this is the thing,
[08:33.880 –> 08:40.080] this is the difference for me, right? So Hades, yeah, sure, you have some kind of small base
[08:40.080 –> 08:44.600] building, right, in your home, right? But it’s not really, right? It’s basically the place that
[08:44.600 –> 08:50.520] you go to after you fail, to get ready to go and fail again, right? Whereas the point in Cult of,
[08:50.520 –> 08:54.920] because the point of Hades is get to the end of the course, right? The point- Have you unlocked
[08:54.920 –> 08:58.680] the mirror? Let me ask you that. Yes, I have unlocked the mirror. Okay, I’m just making sure.
[08:58.680 –> 09:02.360] You get that really early. I don’t remember, so that’s a mess. I think you get, I think it tells
[09:02.360 –> 09:06.560] you to use it, like, immediately after your first death. Okay, because that mirror makes a
[09:06.560 –> 09:09.440] difference. It does, you know, it absolutely does. And I’m not saying that it doesn’t build
[09:09.440 –> 09:13.680] anything up. There is obviously that building up of the stuff that you do, but I feel like
[09:13.680 –> 09:19.440] this power-ups you get when you’re out on the run are just so much more powerful than any of the
[09:19.440 –> 09:24.980] stuff that you’re building up in the base. But anyway, the reason why I think the Cult of the
[09:24.980 –> 09:30.440] Lamb is different and why I enjoy it is the point of Cult of the Lamb is your base. That’s the point,
[09:30.440 –> 09:36.240] right? And you go out on runs to gather resources, and if you fail on gathering resources, you just
[09:36.240 –> 09:42.400] don’t get more resources. Yeah. And you can just try again. Okay. Whereas the point of Hades is
[09:42.400 –> 09:46.400] getting to the end of the course, and if you don’t get to the end of the course, you’ve failed. Yeah,
[09:46.400 –> 09:51.800] all right, that’s fair. That’s the difference, I find. Okay, yeah, that’s a very good point,
[09:51.800 –> 09:59.640] and you’re right, because, yeah, the Cult of the Lamb, the base is half the game, absolutely. I’d
[09:59.640 –> 10:07.000] say it’s more than half the game. Well, maybe. I guess it depends how you define half the game,
[10:07.000 –> 10:10.600] right? Because different people will play different ways. So if you’re thinking in terms
[10:10.600 –> 10:17.200] of like amount of time played, then it depends on how you play. I went out on runs when I needed to
[10:17.200 –> 10:23.080] to get stuff, right? But I much more enjoyed being on the base. Anyway, so that’s my Hades. I’ll talk
[10:23.080 –> 10:28.520] more about it in the future. I’m not going to immediately stop playing it, but I’m not playing
[10:28.520 –> 10:35.000] it right now, because all my game time is currently taken up by the Scarlet and Violet
[10:35.000 –> 10:44.360] Pokemon DLC. So I, okay, I have not played it. I have seen things about it, like I’ve seen the
[10:44.360 –> 10:51.000] things I care about, and I’ll probably get it at some point, but the consensus I’m hearing is that
[10:51.000 –> 10:56.480] it is more Scarlet and Violet. So I think it depends on what you think about that. So like,
[10:57.440 –> 11:00.800] this is the thing is like, people are like, is it better? And it’s like, it depends what you mean
[11:00.800 –> 11:04.640] by that. If you mean, have they fixed the performance issues? No, of course they’ve not.
[11:04.640 –> 11:09.800] They were never going to do that. I said that 10 months ago, they were never going to fix these
[11:09.800 –> 11:15.000] performance issues, right? They made things better over time. It is definitely a better game now than
[11:15.000 –> 11:20.320] it was at release. A hundred percent, there are improvements in the performance, but to say that
[11:20.320 –> 11:25.080] they would be gone, they’ve definitely still improved, right? They’re not perfect, but they’re
[11:25.080 –> 11:30.840] definitely better than they were. I used to get stuck in the menus every single raid. That never
[11:30.840 –> 11:37.040] happens for me now. Now I’m not saying they’re perfect, but it has definitely improved. I’m not
[11:37.040 –> 11:41.880] saying it doesn’t happen at all. What I’m saying is it has improved. It is definitely better than
[11:41.880 –> 11:47.320] it was. So this is the thing is like, I need to know what people are expecting out of the question
[11:47.320 –> 11:53.520] to give them an answer. So if your question is, have they made the game perfect? Then obviously
[11:53.520 –> 11:57.080] the answer is no. If the question is, have they made the performance better? The answer is not
[11:57.080 –> 12:04.600] really no. Not since the last update. And that’s such a loaded question, right? And you say that
[12:04.600 –> 12:09.360] knowing it’s a loaded question, right? Because I can’t tell you how much fun I’ve had in this game
[12:09.360 –> 12:13.040] because it’s a lot, right? Like I wouldn’t put the amount of time into this game if I wasn’t actually
[12:13.040 –> 12:18.800] enjoying myself. Are you sure? Absolutely. And I’m not trying to tell anybody that they should be
[12:18.800 –> 12:27.720] enjoying this game, but fun means different things for different people. I’ve put a lot of game time into that new Animal Crossing. What I would say is there are, I don’t think there are
[12:27.720 –> 12:31.880] more trainers in this area than there were in the last one, which I know is one of your kind of like,
[12:31.880 –> 12:36.240] there aren’t more people in the, in the area than there were in the last one, which I know is one
[12:36.240 –> 12:40.400] of your issues. It’s not the only issue I know, but that is certainly one issue that I don’t think
[12:40.400 –> 12:47.640] has been addressed. There is, it still feels empty of people. What I will say is that I think, and
[12:47.680 –> 12:55.320] this is my personal opinion, I think this area compared to Paldea, I think Kitakami is a better
[12:55.320 –> 13:03.920] designed area and it feels as a whole more filled out. I feel like there are, there are very,
[13:03.920 –> 13:10.040] there’s not really any areas where you look and you go, there’s nothing here at all. Okay. There
[13:10.040 –> 13:16.760] are more landmarks per square mile, I think. Okay. I think that’s already an improvement. Yeah. The
[13:16.760 –> 13:22.720] storyline is, I think, so probably on par with the storylines in the, in the main one. I mean,
[13:22.720 –> 13:28.520] I mean, that’s just Pokemon. This is the thing, right? I think, I think that we generally agreed
[13:28.520 –> 13:32.840] that the stories were better than previous games, right? Cause it’s not just like, Oh,
[13:32.840 –> 13:39.080] the end of the world and Oh no, we’ve saved the world. I don’t, I mean, that’s not my opinion.
[13:39.080 –> 13:46.520] Okay. Lots of people have, prefer the stories in Scarlet and Violet to some previous stories
[13:46.520 –> 13:52.880] because they’re more personal. And I think that has continued. So yes. So in terms of like story,
[13:52.880 –> 13:58.480] I think it continues to be more Scarlet and Violet in terms of lack of people, it continues to be
[13:58.480 –> 14:06.080] a story in Scarlet and Violet in terms of how the world feels personally, I feel like it has improved
[14:06.080 –> 14:11.780] in terms of how the game plays. It is the same because it’s still the same game. Obviously they
[14:11.780 –> 14:16.500] have not massively improved performance. The boxes are a bit better, but they’re still not
[14:16.500 –> 14:22.940] amazing. Um, and obviously they have not changed how the movement across the world works, which is
[14:22.940 –> 14:30.820] obviously in my opinion, it’s biggest problem. One of them. Yes, absolutely. Okay. Here’s a
[14:30.820 –> 14:38.380] question that I think can be somewhat objectively measured. Are there things to do? And it sounds,
[14:38.540 –> 14:43.780] it’s a very broad, dumb way of saying, but like in Scarlet and Violet, once you’ve caught all the
[14:43.780 –> 14:49.900] Pokemon, you, there isn’t that much left to, you know, clear the stories, caught all, filled your
[14:49.900 –> 14:56.020] decks. There’s not much left to do. It’s raids, right? That’s what they want you to do is raids.
[14:56.020 –> 15:01.500] Yes. Um, I don’t know, cause I’ve not got that far and I’ve not really been Googling for things.
[15:01.500 –> 15:10.820] So I’m, I’m in the midst of the story. All right. Well, that’s fine. Um, okay. I’ll update you on
[15:10.820 –> 15:16.980] that when I get further. Um, but yeah, I mean, I really, I, and I like some of the new areas in,
[15:16.980 –> 15:25.220] in this are really nicely designed areas I feel, um, uh, which is, is fun. Um, but yeah, I mean,
[15:25.220 –> 15:30.860] you know, if you absolutely hated Scarlet and Violet, obviously don’t buy this, right? Like
[15:30.900 –> 15:36.580] it just depends on what aspects you didn’t like and which aspects you do. And for me, I just,
[15:36.580 –> 15:42.500] I like playing the game. I like catching the Pokemon, you know, obviously cause that’s like,
[15:42.500 –> 15:48.460] you have to like catching the Pokemon to, you know, play a professional challenge. Um, I like,
[15:48.460 –> 15:54.180] yeah, I like lots of aspects of this game. I definitely want it to be better, but yes,
[15:54.180 –> 15:59.580] it is more of that, but I liked that in the first place. Okay.
[15:59.580 –> 16:12.260] All right. I, I, yeah. Okay. I get the gist of it. Um, it kills me. It absolutely kills me that
[16:12.260 –> 16:21.380] I will probably get this largely because of one new thing that I, I mean, I won’t know,
[16:21.380 –> 16:26.060] don’t know what you know, or I usually leaks guys. You probably know, but the listeners don’t know.
[16:26.060 –> 16:31.820] As I said with the original, the base Scarlet Violet, Pokemon is good at Pokemon. That whole
[16:31.820 –> 16:37.260] Dex, I like those Pokemon. I like seeing them. And all of the new Pokemon I like as well. Yeah,
[16:37.260 –> 16:42.440] I do too. I don’t think all of them are some of the best, but I think some of them are some of
[16:42.440 –> 16:48.060] the best they’ve done. Sure. They’re enjoyable. And it kills me. It kills me that I want,
[16:48.060 –> 16:54.860] the only reason I want the DLC is to see those new Pokemon. Yeah. You can always try trading
[16:54.860 –> 17:00.500] because you can get them in the base. I like, I know I can’t, but just, and that’s, and this is
[17:00.500 –> 17:05.420] the thing, this is what I actually like how they’ve done DLC, both with sword and shield and
[17:05.420 –> 17:09.420] Scarlet and violet. They don’t make you buy it to get the new Pokemon. Yeah. It’s not right. You
[17:09.420 –> 17:13.180] have to, you have to buy it if you want to get them yourself, but you can always trade for them.
[17:13.180 –> 17:20.180] And, you know, in my experience, you put up any shiny Pokemon on the GTS asking for any legendary
[17:20.260 –> 17:25.700] and you will get that legendary, right? You can get any Pokemon if you have a good selection of
[17:25.700 –> 17:32.380] spare shinies. Right. It’s, it’s so easy, um, to do like, like even, uh, Oh, what’s it called?
[17:32.380 –> 17:39.540] What’s the one from legends? Uh, the, the genie, the, the, the, Oh, an amorous or whatever. Yeah.
[17:39.540 –> 17:43.820] And amorous, even an amorous, I’ve had multiple and amorous just from random shiny. That’s nuts.
[17:43.820 –> 17:49.340] You know, like people will trade anything for shiny Pokemon. Dang. I mean, legends is a great
[17:49.340 –> 17:55.220] game and all, but that’s, that’s a track to getting an amorous. Um, Oh, wow. I will give
[17:55.220 –> 18:02.140] props to the DLC for, Oh, okay. Here’s a big question. And so one of the biggest selling
[18:02.140 –> 18:09.500] points for me as a Scarlet player, especially I can get out of those hideous orange shorts. Um,
[18:09.500 –> 18:17.460] can I bring my you cuts or whatever to the pal day? Uh, the main area. That is a good question.
[18:17.460 –> 18:22.020] Oh no, you don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Cause like I’ve just been spending all
[18:22.020 –> 18:27.380] my time in the new area. Let me tell you, let me, let me, let me, let me live. Tell you,
[18:27.380 –> 18:31.100] it’s going to happen. Here we go. Cause I was playing some Mario Kart with Craig earlier.
[18:31.100 –> 18:39.740] So let me just beat the game. Oh, so how big is the, the, the map? Good question. It’s hard to
[18:39.740 –> 18:44.860] know because on in the game, when you like switch between the maps, it shows them different scales,
[18:44.900 –> 18:53.980] right? So it looks like they’re the same size, but they’re not. It feels maybe like crown
[18:53.980 –> 18:59.860] tundra sized. Okay. That’s decent. Yeah. So like I think bigger than Isle of armor,
[18:59.860 –> 19:10.580] but not, but not as big as the, obviously mean, right. Let me check. Right. Game is booted up.
[19:11.420 –> 19:19.580] Let me travel over to Paldera. Let’s just go to Mazagoza because that’s my only travel point
[19:19.580 –> 19:25.460] because I’ve not got far in this version. Oh, I’m on a plane apparently because a little,
[19:25.460 –> 19:30.740] oh, that’s fun. Little animation of a plane and a Dragonite flying next to it. Oh, that’s cool.
[19:30.740 –> 19:35.620] Dragonite flies off. And here we go. We’ve touched down and I am still in my clothes from
[19:35.620 –> 19:44.380] Kitagami. There we go. All right. Day’s saved. Okay. DLC is worth it for that alone. It really
[19:44.380 –> 19:50.380] is much better to not be in school uniform. It’s still white wild to me that they did that. Right.
[19:50.380 –> 19:54.580] Like I get why they wanted to do it, but like just force you back into those clothes for like
[19:54.580 –> 20:02.900] the specific cut scenes. If you really want that. Yes. Like, yes, it’s, you can also like the extra
[20:02.900 –> 20:08.380] things that you can buy, you can just buy in Paldera as well. Um, the, cause they give you
[20:08.380 –> 20:14.100] a style card, right? And that gives you the ability to buy them in. Oh, that’s cool. That’s
[20:14.100 –> 20:19.540] nice. You don’t have to go to the new area to buy the stuff. That’s, that’s nice. This place
[20:19.540 –> 20:24.660] is only selling glasses, hats and gloves. So I need to find a place that’s selling more than
[20:24.660 –> 20:28.540] that. No, I didn’t mean to walk back in. This is the thing that really annoys me about these games.
[20:28.540 –> 20:35.580] When you walk out of a shop, it has you facing the shop. Oh yeah. So it has you facing away from
[20:35.580 –> 20:40.020] the shop, right? You came up to it facing the shop. So I automatically think, Oh, I need to
[20:40.020 –> 20:45.220] go backwards because I was facing forwards and I don’t want to go forwards cause that’s me facing
[20:45.220 –> 20:50.220] towards the shop. But then you go backwards, you go straight back into the shop. Oh, it’s bags.
[20:50.220 –> 20:55.860] This one is. Ooh. Right. Let’s see what these bags. It’s definitely a different style of bag.
[20:55.860 –> 21:03.020] It’s one, one different style of bag. Anyway. Uh, yeah. So you can definitely leave without,
[21:03.020 –> 21:07.100] you can definitely go to Pildea without the school uniform. So. All right. That’s good.
[21:07.100 –> 21:13.900] That’s a big plus. But yeah, I am enjoying it. And, um, as we mentioned in the greenhouse episode
[21:13.900 –> 21:18.180] that hopefully has already come out, but I don’t know when I’m going to edit it. So it might not
[21:18.180 –> 21:23.340] be out yet. It might come out on Saturday. Um, I am considering doing another Professor Oak
[21:23.340 –> 21:33.060] challenge because why not? Well, I can answer why not, but let’s not get into that. I think
[21:33.060 –> 21:41.900] that’s everything that we’ve been up to. That’s cool. Look, I’m just, it’s fine that I’m in,
[21:41.900 –> 21:49.380] I’m, I’m winding down because 10 days of this recording, you know, what’s coming begins the,
[21:49.500 –> 21:55.900] the Maneco Geddon begins. Goodbye the world. Oh yeah. All right. What,
[21:55.900 –> 22:02.140] what non Maneco things are supposedly coming out? Let’s talk about some news. So we have Disney
[22:02.140 –> 22:08.980] Dreamlight Valley. The enchanted adventure update is out now. This is the update with Belle. Um, so
[22:08.980 –> 22:18.460] the Beauty and the Beast realm and the storyline there. Um, and a lot of other things like there’s
[22:18.460 –> 22:23.020] a big long list. If you play this game, you probably have already looked at the list to see
[22:23.020 –> 22:28.260] if what you care about. So I’m not going to go over all that just now, but it is out now. Um,
[22:28.260 –> 22:34.660] and I am still convinced that the next update will be the either final early access update
[22:34.660 –> 22:40.340] or the one final update. That is what I’m convinced of. Oh snap. There’s Jack Skellington
[22:40.340 –> 22:45.420] outfits in this. Look, there’s everything. There’s everything in this game. This is like,
[22:45.660 –> 22:51.020] this is the everything game. Well, I mean, I don’t cause you know,
[22:51.020 –> 23:00.140] nightmare before Christmas is a little, you know, not, I mean it is Disney, but like they don’t
[23:00.140 –> 23:05.780] usually lump it in with the princesses and the Mickey’s and whatever. Right. Usually all kind
[23:05.780 –> 23:10.140] of its own corner. Some surprise it made it in. Yeah. I look, I look forward to when they start
[23:10.140 –> 23:17.380] bringing the Marvel and the star Wars and oh goodness. No, no. Whatever. Bell’s cool. She’s
[23:17.380 –> 23:21.260] my second favorite princess. Um, well, you’re going to have to see who your first is then.
[23:21.260 –> 23:32.660] It’s Rapunzel because she’s incredible. She’s the best. Not Moana. I like Moana. You don’t
[23:32.660 –> 23:38.980] Moana. No, there’s nothing wrong with Moana. Moana is great. Just Rapunzel set the bar real
[23:38.980 –> 23:44.460] high and I don’t know. I’m just, Bell’s just pure nostalgia, like beauty and the beast. That’s a
[23:44.460 –> 23:49.980] good one. Fair enough. I just have real problems with that storyline. So I struggle to connect.
[23:49.980 –> 23:58.860] There are, there are a lot of problems with that storyline. Gaston might be the hero if you think
[23:58.860 –> 24:07.060] about it. You look at it from his point of view. No, except the, the thing he did with his dad,
[24:07.060 –> 24:12.540] but other than that. Yeah, well sure. He’s not a good guy. Right. Let’s not pretend he’s a good
[24:12.540 –> 24:16.580] guy. Yeah. He’s not a good guy. That’s not what we’re trying to say here. Not a good guy. But he
[24:16.580 –> 24:27.460] wasn’t irrational. Yeah. Uh, okay. Anyway, above snakes, they has a 1.3 update is out now as well.
[24:27.860 –> 24:34.780] This includes a photo mode plus a bunch of other content, some furniture and the piano. I don’t
[24:34.780 –> 24:40.180] know why they specifically mentioned the piano. I don’t know. Piano. If you want a piano, there’s
[24:40.180 –> 24:47.180] always playable. Oh goodness. Right. Okay. I missed that. If you want a playable piano in
[24:47.180 –> 24:53.900] this game, there you go. And it’s on discount right now for, I don’t know how, 20% off. There
[24:53.900 –> 25:01.580] you go. All right. Um, then we have Apico has its 3.0 update, which is coming out on the 26th of
[25:01.580 –> 25:18.660] September. Oh, special silly September day. Oh, Apico. Um, it’s Maneco day. It is. So we’re back
[25:18.660 –> 25:24.340] up. We’re back up to fish. We’re back up. Yes. Yeah. It says underwater bees right there. You
[25:24.340 –> 25:29.300] get fish. I think we talked about this a little bit, right? Yeah. So you can fish in the game.
[25:29.300 –> 25:38.060] Yeah. But also there’s underwater bees. Yeah. For some reason. Fish. Um, one thing I want to
[25:38.060 –> 25:44.700] note that I didn’t catch before Cody, her, they, it’s Cody, Matt. I don’t know if it’s Matt,
[25:44.940 –> 25:51.940] Mathive or Mathive, but they changed her name from, from her last name to put hive in it. I
[25:51.940 –> 25:59.460] love that. I missed that. Yeah. All right. Go anyways. Yeah. So a bunch of water stuff in,
[25:59.460 –> 26:06.460] in Apico. Go, go restore coral reefs. They’re called the highs of the, the sea for a reason.
[26:06.460 –> 26:17.380] Um, ever dream Valley have released a roadmap. So they have a big update coming in October,
[26:17.380 –> 26:24.180] a Halloween event coming in October as well as every game has to have, obviously. And, uh, their
[26:24.180 –> 26:32.020] multiplayer beta is coming out in December. Cool. I’m going to get annoyed. Ah, there’s this thing
[26:32.020 –> 26:35.780] that some games do, right? Where they go, Oh, this is the beta of multiplayer, but it’s like
[26:35.820 –> 26:42.140] baked into a release of the game, right? It’s not, it’s not like a thing that you can’t like,
[26:42.140 –> 26:46.780] you choose to update to because you’re on the beta branch, right? Don’t call something beta.
[26:46.780 –> 26:53.420] If the game is not a beta, right? Like you can’t add a feature into your game and call it beta.
[26:53.420 –> 26:59.900] Like it means anything. Your game is released. Act like your game is released. What are you doing?
[27:00.740 –> 27:08.900] Nothing matters in game dev talk. Nothing matters. It’s just the first version of multiplayer. Just
[27:08.900 –> 27:14.020] call it that. I forgot how this game looked. It was looking at that’s cute game. Yeah,
[27:14.020 –> 27:22.260] there’s a pig. Oh yeah. I’ve never really looked too much into this game. I haven’t either because
[27:22.260 –> 27:28.580] there’s nothing really kind of like stuck out to me, but yeah, it just keeps rolling. It’s in
[27:28.620 –> 27:35.900] that filing cabinet Al has of we need an episode game when we need an episode and we have a week
[27:35.900 –> 27:41.420] where we can actually play a game because that’s the other key point, right? Like it’s great when
[27:41.420 –> 27:45.580] we have time to do it, but when we say we’ve got an episode next week, we don’t have a topic for
[27:45.580 –> 27:54.300] and everybody’s busy playing something. All right. Time to have random topics. Mica and the
[27:54.300 –> 28:02.060] witch’s mountain will all be playing that and not ever dream when it comes out. Sadly,
[28:02.700 –> 28:11.980] it’s been delayed to early 2024. That’s fine. That’s fine. You take your time. Mika. I have
[28:11.980 –> 28:19.660] Maneko on my plate that I need to get through. Yeah. They’d never given an exact date, but I
[28:19.660 –> 28:26.380] think the kickstarter had said October 2023. I think they’ve been pretty good at releasing
[28:26.380 –> 28:32.220] things roughly on schedule. So I think their last game was like two months late or something like
[28:32.220 –> 28:40.540] that, which for a kickstarter game is basically on time, you know? Yeah, it really is. Yeah. So
[28:40.540 –> 28:47.660] Mika said October 2023. That’s what it said. And, uh, oh, in fact, Koa and the five pirates
[28:47.660 –> 28:53.020] said September 2023 and I think actually came out in August. So I actually did come out. Oh,
[28:53.020 –> 29:01.180] dang. So that’s something. And Summer and Mara said, oh, so that said September 2019
[29:01.180 –> 29:06.940] and I think came out March 2020. So it was a few months late, that one. Um, but, um, it’s pretty
[29:06.940 –> 29:13.580] good. It’s pretty good. Considering, considering I have, considering I have multiple kickstarters
[29:13.580 –> 29:21.340] that are currently two years late. Um, I mean, and that’s not to mention the bidet that I,
[29:21.340 –> 29:28.380] that I’m, that I kickstarted that was meant to come out in December 2020 still hasn’t come out.
[29:29.820 –> 29:36.940] Okay. What was special about it? Why was it a kickstarter? It’s a portable bidet. Okay.
[29:36.940 –> 29:42.460] So you take it with you. Like it’s handheld thing. Okay. Like it’s like a little,
[29:43.100 –> 29:47.820] it looks kind of like a big, a big torch, big flash. What, what?
[29:49.500 –> 29:53.100] With a little spray nozzle on the side. Okay. So it’s,
[29:54.940 –> 30:00.540] what are you connecting to? Or just has it. So you pour the water into it from attack. Okay.
[30:01.260 –> 30:10.780] Okay. Okay. And, and it just, all right, ready to go. Yep. I mean, okay. Like I’m, I’m,
[30:10.780 –> 30:17.900] I’m just trying to imagine designing this thing, like to achieve that functionality.
[30:17.900 –> 30:23.740] Yeah. I’m still not sure. I’m still not sure. It’s not a scam. Right.
[30:25.100 –> 30:30.140] Well, look, you can say that about a lot of kickstarters. Three years late. Three years
[30:30.140 –> 30:35.340] late. Three legends came out and I’m still wondering. So the last update we got on this
[30:35.340 –> 30:42.940] was in March and they said, we’re ready to, ready to, to deliver. And eventually we still haven’t.
[30:42.940 –> 30:51.900] That was March. So look, I’m just, I’ve, I’m there. Okay. I’ve never used a bidet personally.
[30:51.900 –> 30:57.740] Okay. Like they’re not common in the area of states where I live or whatever. I’ve never
[30:57.740 –> 31:05.180] seen one in person. So I’m just like, if you care that much about having a bidet,
[31:06.060 –> 31:10.860] like, is it, is not a spray bottle good enough?
[31:14.700 –> 31:20.060] We don’t need to get into this, right? 2020 was a weird time, Kevin. Let’s not, we don’t judge,
[31:20.060 –> 31:26.220] we don’t judge what anybody did in 2020. Assuming you obviously didn’t like actually harm people,
[31:26.220 –> 31:29.100] right? We don’t judge the weird decisions we made in 2020.
[31:29.900 –> 31:39.340] No, I’m, I’m, I’m just, I’m just wondering like how many back this fascinates me. Like
[31:39.980 –> 31:46.060] Coral Island, their new charity DLC is now out. So we’ll link to that in the show notes.
[31:47.020 –> 31:52.460] I have already bought it. We’ll do it. We’ll do a greenhouse episode on it.
[31:53.020 –> 31:56.060] Yeah. If you really want to talk more about my portable bidet.
[32:00.700 –> 32:03.420] Oh no, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re obviously going to do another episode of
[32:03.420 –> 32:07.100] Coral Island when it’s one year old. Yeah. Yeah. Charity. Okay. For real,
[32:07.100 –> 32:10.780] go save the real coral race with that. It’s cool.
[32:10.780 –> 32:15.340] It’s a cool DLC. I got the last one as well. They’re both cool. Get,
[32:15.340 –> 32:17.420] you can’t get the first one, but you can get the second one.
[32:17.420 –> 32:23.580] I, I haven’t played Coral Island yet, but boy, do I like the ocean,
[32:23.580 –> 32:27.820] the real one and the real coral reef. So yay for helping.
[32:30.060 –> 32:36.380] Moonstone Island have announced a collector’s edition, which is like two quid more than the
[32:36.380 –> 32:44.380] main one and gets you not a lot. It is not a lot because what it gets you is a full color art book.
[32:45.340 –> 32:50.460] The download of the original soundtrack and some exclusive decor in game.
[32:52.220 –> 32:56.940] So that feels like a no brainer to me. Yeah. If you like Moonstone Island,
[32:56.940 –> 33:02.780] that’s the no brainer boy. The, the lo-fi girl is just super popular
[33:03.900 –> 33:08.620] because that’s what they have here. Yeah. Okay. All right.
[33:09.260 –> 33:18.460] Uh, what else? So this is an interesting one. So this is an interesting one, right? Okay. So I,
[33:18.460 –> 33:24.300] I want to preface this with, I don’t normally cover like random little features that are on
[33:24.300 –> 33:28.700] games before they release. Right. Cause we’d be here all day if we were covering stuff like that.
[33:30.060 –> 33:35.660] But I think this one is interesting enough that it feels like I want to talk about it. Okay.
[33:36.220 –> 33:41.260] And that is Spirit Tea doesn’t force you to sleep at specific times of the day.
[33:41.900 –> 33:47.260] You can choose when you’re sleeping. They just require you to get a certain amount of sleep
[33:47.260 –> 33:51.980] and you can choose when that is. So if you want to be like out all night and sleep during the day,
[33:51.980 –> 33:56.620] you can do that in this game. That is very interesting.
[33:56.620 –> 34:03.980] I know. Right. That’s a cool idea. Um, yeah, yeah, no, good on that. Like obviously,
[34:04.540 –> 34:07.900] presumably the nighttime will be worth staying up for.
[34:08.460 –> 34:14.380] Yeah. So it says that some characters are, are, are like, it doesn’t say nocturnal. It says night
[34:14.380 –> 34:20.220] hours, but yeah, like there’ll be people that will be out either only at night or mostly at night,
[34:20.220 –> 34:25.900] um, and stuff like that. So, uh, yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how it goes.
[34:26.540 –> 34:31.420] Yeah. That’s, that’s an interesting way to go about it. Um,
[34:31.420 –> 34:35.660] yes, I think at this point we’re at the it’s interesting stage and we’ll see whether it’s
[34:35.660 –> 34:42.140] good or not later. Um, once we’ve actually got to play this game. Other games probably could
[34:42.140 –> 34:46.300] benefit from that for sure, but okay. Yeah, cool. Yeah. I feel like it’s the sort of thing that
[34:46.300 –> 34:51.660] couldn’t be actively bad. Um, it might be something that we don’t use very much, but like giving you
[34:52.300 –> 34:57.980] the option feels like a good thing in and of itself. It is. Sure. Yeah. But anyway,
[34:57.980 –> 35:02.060] it’s not a huge thing. I just felt like it would be interesting to at least mention that.
[35:02.940 –> 35:10.380] Ooblets plushies. I played smooshy come home. There aren’t a lot of names in smooshy
[35:10.380 –> 35:14.460] granted, but you know, one’s called smooshy. There’s another guy called chunky
[35:15.260 –> 35:21.100] and I still think the name Shrumbo is dumb. Clumper and Glanter.
[35:21.100 –> 35:28.380] These are, look at those faces though. Let me, let me look at the face. I’m just looking at
[35:28.380 –> 35:35.500] the names. What’s a Shrumbo that feels like a fake Mon that they put on the Simpsons on the TV.
[35:37.500 –> 35:43.820] Good old, uh, little Shrumbo. Oh, Shrumbo is pretty cute though. Actually Shrumbo would fit
[35:43.820 –> 35:49.420] right in smooshy world. So I’m not going to complain. So Shrumbo plushie is available now
[35:49.420 –> 35:55.980] in the US and it’s coming soon in the EU. I’m sorry in Europe. I don’t know why I wrote EU.
[35:56.540 –> 36:02.780] Coming soon in Europe. I have requested to get a notification when we can buy it here.
[36:03.980 –> 36:09.020] And clumper and Glanter are coming soon. They’re not on the Europe site. Interestingly. I don’t
[36:09.020 –> 36:13.740] know whether they’re not coming or whether they’re just not up on the site yet, but Shrumbo is up on
[36:14.300 –> 36:20.940] the Europe site. So he’s a big, big squishy boy. All of them. I don’t know what you’re talking
[36:20.940 –> 36:26.460] about, but they all Shrumbo specifically. Yeah, he is. He really looks like he’d fit in smooshy
[36:26.460 –> 36:35.100] with the name and all. All right. Let’s talk about Eastward Octopia. It was in the Nintendo Direct,
[36:36.220 –> 36:41.660] which I thought, I thought I’d managed to get out of this direct. Um, uh, talking about it on
[36:41.660 –> 36:45.420] this podcast. Um, I’m just talking about in the greenhouse cause I was like, there are no farming
[36:45.420 –> 36:51.820] games. And then I looked closer at this game and realize this is a farming game. Very, very clearly.
[36:51.820 –> 36:55.500] Yeah. Like I don’t know how I missed it when we were watching. I just went Eastward. Oh,
[36:55.500 –> 36:58.780] that’s a game I don’t really care about. Let’s ignore what’s happening here.
[36:58.780 –> 37:06.060] I didn’t realize this is a DLC to Eastward, right? Which is coming soon. No release date yet. A DLC
[37:06.060 –> 37:14.540] to Eastward that you don’t need to play Eastward to play. Yup. Right. It’s like a whole separate
[37:14.540 –> 37:20.300] game. Yeah. And it’s a whole completely different game. The graphics are the same. Presumably the
[37:20.300 –> 37:26.860] controls are very similar, but it is a farming game and Eastward is an adventure game. These
[37:26.860 –> 37:38.380] are not the same thing. I mean, not an adventure. No, this is a weird thing to happen. Like what,
[37:38.380 –> 37:45.500] why is this a DLC and not another game? First of all, weird. Well, that’s that. Now that is
[37:45.500 –> 37:52.380] a good question. Um, so what, here’s an interesting point. I just, I was watching the, the, the farming
[37:52.380 –> 37:57.740] animation and um, when they’re watering, they’re just like walking along the line of crops,
[37:57.740 –> 38:03.340] pouring water. They’re not like, take a walk, water, take a walk, water. They’re just walking
[38:03.340 –> 38:08.860] along and they’re, the animation for watering is continuous. That’s so nice. Isn’t it?
[38:10.460 –> 38:16.220] Why is this not a thing in other games? I hate, I hate slash love when a game does this and they’re
[38:16.220 –> 38:21.980] like, here’s a thing that you never would have thought of, but now that it exists, every other
[38:21.980 –> 38:28.220] game that doesn’t do this is going to annoy you. It’s all ruined now. Like I never want to see a
[38:28.220 –> 38:37.820] farming square again. Just make it all continue. Oh man. Oh, so this is interesting. I don’t know
[38:37.820 –> 38:44.860] what I’m going to do with this because I had no interest to play Eastward ever. Right. I still,
[38:44.860 –> 38:50.540] and you still don’t have to buy it though, but I have to buy the game,
[38:51.340 –> 38:54.300] but it doesn’t seem too expensive. So that is good. Um,
[38:56.540 –> 39:00.620] but yeah, it’s like welcome to the charming world of Eastward population declining journey
[39:00.620 –> 39:05.420] through a society on the brink of collapse. Discover delightful towns, strain creatures
[39:05.420 –> 39:11.980] and even stranger people. We are a trusty frying pan and mystic powers on an adventure into an
[39:11.980 –> 39:20.140] unknown. And then this is Sam and John return in an all new adventure. Remember this, remember this
[39:20.140 –> 39:26.940] is a DLC in this heartwarming story driven farming sim players can grow crops, tend livestock
[39:26.940 –> 39:31.100] and turn an abandoned fairground into a thriving village with the help of the weird and wonderful
[39:31.100 –> 39:38.220] cast of beloved Eastward characters in a parallel universe where time and space have collided.
[39:38.220 –> 39:43.420] Sam and John moved to a peaceful corner of the globe. I’m sorry, a parallel universe.
[39:44.140 –> 39:51.500] Well, there you go. That solves all the problem. What? What? We’re doing multi travel in Eastward
[39:51.500 –> 39:58.460] now. This is a large DLC for Eastward with a brand new story in an all new farming game mode.
[39:58.460 –> 40:06.300] Eastward is required to play the Eastward Octopia DLC. Eastward and the multiverse of cottagecore.
[40:06.940 –> 40:15.260] This is weird. It’s weird, but they got us. It might be good weird. I’m not 100% sure.
[40:16.860 –> 40:23.820] I don’t know. Their update on it is announcing Octopia a new farming DLC coming Eastward.
[40:23.820 –> 40:28.140] I bet you didn’t see that coming. They start off. You’re right about that.
[40:29.580 –> 40:35.820] So the Eastward Octopia DLC will be accessible straight from Eastward start menu and suitable
[40:35.900 –> 40:38.940] for brand new players and Eastward completionists alike.
[40:40.700 –> 40:46.860] Why is this a DLC? The more I think about it, the more the more I’m on board with this
[40:47.500 –> 40:57.580] general idea of of totally separate different DLC. This is weird. Like, oh man,
[40:58.460 –> 41:02.620] I’m trying to think of a good example of a wild one. Well, I was going to make a joke
[41:02.620 –> 41:08.220] about Final Fantasy or something, right? Having like a random addition that adds farming.
[41:08.220 –> 41:09.900] Those are already in Final Fantasy.
[41:09.900 –> 41:15.740] I realized they did that. They did that in Final Fantasy 14. Not only that, it’s on the moon.
[41:16.780 –> 41:21.660] Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, Final Fantasy has those baked in.
[41:21.660 –> 41:27.340] There’s no joke you can make about Final Fantasy, but it’s something they’ve probably already done.
[41:27.340 –> 41:36.380] No, I mean, it’s like Mario Wonder gets a DLC that’s, I don’t know.
[41:38.060 –> 41:44.300] Oh, it’s like, you know, it’s like they did Mario 3D World and they just added on a whole
[41:44.940 –> 41:48.140] new game onto it. There was an open world 3D platformer.
[41:48.700 –> 41:51.020] Yeah. Oh, wait, they did.
[41:53.020 –> 41:54.060] Yeah, they did.
[41:57.340 –> 42:01.580] I still need to play that one. All right. Interesting looking.
[42:01.580 –> 42:07.660] Did you look at the fishing minigame? Oh, I remember looking at it. I remember,
[42:07.660 –> 42:11.340] I don’t remember what it is right now, but I remember noting it in my brain.
[42:11.340 –> 42:16.380] Weird. Also, is that flying flying cows and pigs? Why are they flying?
[42:17.020 –> 42:22.620] I don’t know. Yeah. Okay. That looks a little like, what’s it called?
[42:24.060 –> 42:28.700] Well, I mean, the circle roots of Pacha. But yeah, that fishing actually looks interesting.
[42:29.740 –> 42:36.700] It looks dynamic. I appreciate a dynamic minigame. All right. Whatever. I mean,
[42:37.980 –> 42:41.260] it’s crazy, right? Because if this were a standalone game, this would be like,
[42:41.260 –> 42:44.940] for sure. Just like, yeah, I’m down for that. But the fact that it’s DLC.
[42:45.740 –> 42:50.540] Octopia is a weird name. I haven’t played Eastward, so probably maybe it means something.
[42:50.540 –> 42:56.700] I don’t know. Wait, can we get a DLC where the universe is collide?
[43:00.460 –> 43:04.460] Japanese rural life simulator talking of weird things.
[43:05.180 –> 43:12.940] Yeah, this. Okay, so this is an Apple arcade game. I’m going to guess that at some point
[43:12.940 –> 43:18.860] it’ll come to Android because their previous games are on Android. This is a Japanese developer
[43:19.740 –> 43:28.060] that has released this game. And it’s about living in rural Japan. View the cherry blossoms in the
[43:28.060 –> 43:33.340] spring, attend the festival in the summer, eat roasted sweet potatoes in the fall, hear the
[43:33.340 –> 43:37.820] temple bell ring in winter, and then it’s time for the first shrine visit of the new year.
[43:38.620 –> 43:46.700] Okay. That’s, I mean, like it’s a experience slow living in the Japanese countryside.
[43:46.700 –> 43:52.860] And it’s interesting because it’s a simulator. So like, there’s no indication of farming or,
[43:52.860 –> 44:00.380] or, you know, build. Yeah, I haven’t seen anything about actually walking around and doing the things.
[44:00.380 –> 44:04.940] So there’s fishing, there’s bug catching, but yeah, I’m not seeing any farming.
[44:06.700 –> 44:11.660] All right, there you go. Presumably there must be farming. You can pick up a dog and
[44:11.660 –> 44:19.020] carry it places. There you go. There’s like rock mining. This photography. Oh yeah,
[44:19.020 –> 44:24.060] that is an interesting one, the photography. It looks like you can like rebuild some like
[44:24.060 –> 44:30.300] broken things. This foraging. Yeah, I’m not seeing any, not seeing any farming. Interesting.
[44:31.260 –> 44:35.580] Not that, not that I think they, everything needs farming. No, no, but you know,
[44:35.580 –> 44:45.820] just what we expect, right? Well, that’s the thing. All right, so that’s the news. Let’s
[44:45.820 –> 44:56.380] talk about Sprout Valley. So overview, I’m going to start off. Is it just Stardew Valley at home?
[44:58.620 –> 45:03.660] That’s harsh. They’re the ones who gave them the same initials.
[45:06.220 –> 45:11.420] So it feels like the way I described this in the, in my notes was it feels like a
[45:11.420 –> 45:18.300] pretty standard farming sim. So I’m right. It’s got all of what, it’s got most of what you expect.
[45:18.940 –> 45:28.060] What is missing is the village. There is no village. What are the other characters by
[45:28.060 –> 45:35.340] yourself? Not really. What does not really mean? Let me get to that. Let me get to that. I need to
[45:35.420 –> 45:42.620] go through my other stuff first. So it does a reasonably good job of merging together some
[45:42.620 –> 45:49.580] standard kind of Stardew Harvest Moon farming stuff with some Animal Crossing stuff.
[45:52.380 –> 45:55.500] I can’t remember what I meant by that at this point, but I’m sure I’ll come through
[45:55.500 –> 46:03.740] in the details. So it was a Kickstarter and it just launched on Steam and Switch
[46:03.740 –> 46:10.140] simultaneously, like what, two weeks ago, something like that. And they only launched
[46:10.140 –> 46:13.980] two months after their Kickstarter initially said they would, which is pretty impressive,
[46:13.980 –> 46:20.540] as we were mentioning earlier with Mika and stuff like that. It’s basically on time.
[46:22.540 –> 46:26.860] There are a few annoyances that I have that I need to talk about before we get into more of
[46:26.860 –> 46:33.340] the details. So first of all, it does feel a little bit buggy just now. So for example,
[46:33.580 –> 46:39.340] if you’re holding the watering can and you go to access the crate, you will access the crate and
[46:39.340 –> 46:44.940] then when you leave the crate, you will water. So it’s doing both of those things instead of
[46:44.940 –> 46:49.100] just accessing the cat crate and then ignoring the fact that you’re holding the water can.
[46:49.100 –> 46:50.620] That’s just efficiency.
[46:50.620 –> 46:55.980] A bit annoying, but it’s not the end of the world. But there’s a bunch of small annoyances,
[46:55.980 –> 47:06.300] especially in the controls. There’s two buttons for doing the action with your tool and sometimes
[47:06.300 –> 47:11.340] one of them doesn’t work, but it changes which one doesn’t work. That’s a bit weird. It’s nothing
[47:11.340 –> 47:17.260] that is like, oh, it makes the game unplayable. It’s just a little bit annoying. Some of the
[47:17.340 –> 47:28.060] things are like they have a really weird level of accessibility for some of the items. So for
[47:28.060 –> 47:34.300] example, you start off with eight spaces in your bag, right? And you can buy them one at a time,
[47:34.860 –> 47:40.060] what space is one at a time for 2000. So like I bought 2000s worth of bag upgrade,
[47:40.060 –> 47:44.220] expecting it to like double my storage. It gave me one extra space.
[47:44.700 –> 47:47.340] Oh, yeah.
[47:47.340 –> 47:52.940] So the bag is really expensive to upgrade. And I also haven’t figured out a way to get like a
[47:52.940 –> 47:58.220] second crate to store things in. I don’t know whether that’s just I’ve not got that far,
[47:58.220 –> 48:03.260] because there is like crafting. So you can craft stuff to make a bunch of stuff. And I’m assuming
[48:03.260 –> 48:08.620] at some point, there’ll be one that I can get for accessing more storage. But it feels weird
[48:08.620 –> 48:15.180] that that’s not available very early on. Because when you start the game with essentially 16 spaces
[48:15.180 –> 48:21.180] for everything, except your tools, your tools are separate storage. So there are eight spaces in
[48:21.180 –> 48:27.740] your bag and eight spaces in the crate, and that’s it. And there are lots of things in this game. So
[48:27.740 –> 48:32.620] you fill up really quickly. So like they have, oh, yes. So my Animal Crossing point was like they
[48:32.620 –> 48:37.180] have like the fruit trees and stuff are very Animal Crossing like, like you can, you know,
[48:39.260 –> 48:44.380] chop a tree to get wood and it doesn’t chop the tree down and you get the fruit works almost
[48:44.380 –> 48:48.220] identically to Animal Crossing and stuff like that. But it does mean that like, when you get
[48:48.220 –> 48:53.740] to your island, there’s like six different fruits that you have on your island. So you’re like
[48:53.740 –> 49:00.940] immediately go around and get them and you’re almost full already. And then it’s like, what am
[49:00.940 –> 49:04.780] I meant to do with all these things? So you just end up selling everything, even if you might need
[49:04.780 –> 49:11.660] them at some point. So that’s a, that’s a bit weird and annoying. It feels very early on, like
[49:11.660 –> 49:17.340] it’s a very small game, right? So you start off and you’re just farming and it feels like that’s
[49:17.340 –> 49:24.700] all there is. But as you do more, they get more stuff. So there’s like a bunch of story that just
[49:24.700 –> 49:30.620] kind of, you don’t think it exists and then suddenly it happens. It’s really hard to
[49:30.620 –> 49:35.180] explain without spoiling it, right? But like you start off on this island where you’re the only
[49:35.180 –> 49:43.340] person on this island and there’s, there’s nothing else. And you do have a boat, but the boat just
[49:43.340 –> 49:48.380] takes you to like a random island, like it does an Animal Crossing. Mystery tours, okay. It’s
[49:48.380 –> 49:53.740] essentially like mystery tours, right? And there might be one person on that island with a shop
[49:53.740 –> 49:59.420] or there might be nobody, right? So you basically see nobody else. And so you assume, oh, well,
[49:59.420 –> 50:07.580] this is fascinating. But then randomly the guy who sold you the island goes, oh yeah, there’s
[50:07.580 –> 50:12.460] a basement in your house. You go down to the basement and there’s a ghost there and you’re
[50:12.460 –> 50:17.180] suddenly better than someone else. You’re like, this is weird. So you’re talking to this ghost
[50:17.180 –> 50:22.620] and that’s where the story starts. But that happens like maybe a week in or something like
[50:22.620 –> 50:28.220] that. So you spend a week playing this game not knowing there’s a story. It’s really weird.
[50:29.900 –> 50:36.780] So it’s like, I don’t think it’s a problem in general except that I feel like people might
[50:36.780 –> 50:41.100] give up quickly because they’re like, is this all the game is? And I found that like, because I was
[50:41.100 –> 50:46.220] looking on a lot of like people who’d, with tutorials or people who were like reviewing
[50:46.220 –> 50:50.060] the game and they all seem to be like, there’s no story. And I just feel like they stopped playing
[50:50.060 –> 50:54.860] before that point because there is a story. Right. But like, they’ve just all gave up
[50:55.580 –> 50:59.420] because they were like, there’s nothing to do. So that’s really weird. I don’t know why
[50:59.420 –> 51:03.340] it doesn’t give you a hint that something’s at least going to happen. Right. Like the quest
[51:03.340 –> 51:12.380] line just doesn’t start. That is. Yeah. And, and no, like no indicate that’s such a long time,
[51:12.380 –> 51:18.540] five days or whatever. That’s weird. Especially as at least one of the day that
[51:19.340 –> 51:23.580] the day that you find out about that stuff, you can’t go to sleep until the story happens.
[51:24.300 –> 51:27.820] Okay. So it’s just like, Oh, I don’t want to sleep. I’m not tired yet. And I’m like,
[51:27.820 –> 51:31.500] what does that mean? What do you mean you’re not tired yet? Am I not allowed to sleep until later?
[51:32.460 –> 51:35.740] But it wasn’t that it was just because there’s story happening that day. So they don’t let you
[51:35.740 –> 51:41.260] sleep through the story. So the story, you have to do it, but you have to stumble on.
[51:41.260 –> 51:44.940] You just have to wait on that day. You just have to wait. If you’ve got nothing else to do,
[51:44.940 –> 51:51.820] you’ve got nothing else to do. It’s really weird. One thing that I find interesting about this is
[51:51.820 –> 51:57.100] there’s a lot of different islands you can get your farm on with different shapes and different
[51:57.100 –> 52:01.100] stuff like that, which is kind of interesting. Right. So you’re encouraged to play multiple times.
[52:02.780 –> 52:11.820] That’s fun. It is fun. It’s interesting. But the opening cut scene cinematic is, is really long.
[52:11.820 –> 52:17.340] And I don’t know, you can skip it. I wrote this sentence. It isn’t skippable. I wrote that while
[52:17.340 –> 52:21.660] I was sitting and watching this, the thing. And I tried to skip it so many different ways.
[52:21.660 –> 52:24.860] And then I tried again, five minutes later, like half, not five minutes later,
[52:24.860 –> 52:29.100] like halfway into the cut scene. And suddenly it said that I could skip it. So I was like, Oh,
[52:29.100 –> 52:34.780] right. So I can skip it then. Right. This is weird. So I don’t know why. Wouldn’t let you
[52:34.780 –> 52:39.420] skip it right at the start. If you’ve played a game already. Like I feel like it’s a pretty
[52:39.420 –> 52:44.300] standard thing in these games. If you’ve like start a second one, it will immediately tell you
[52:44.300 –> 52:48.780] what button to press, to skip things like from the start. That’s quite common because you don’t
[52:48.780 –> 52:53.980] need to see all this a second time, but it took me ages before it would ever show that. Anyway,
[52:54.780 –> 53:01.500] not a huge thing. I suspect most people won’t play it a huge number of times, but I I’ve done
[53:01.500 –> 53:08.380] two saves. I’ve not gone hugely far into each of them because I’ve only had a week really to play
[53:08.380 –> 53:13.900] it. And then Pokemon came out. Um, but I, I did want to restart it cause I didn’t, I didn’t
[53:13.900 –> 53:17.580] realize when I was first doing it that you’re choosing a different Island. So then I went,
[53:17.580 –> 53:21.820] Oh, I want to choose a different Island for the, for this now. And so I restarted and then played
[53:21.820 –> 53:28.860] longer than my first one. Um, it would be really nice if you could expand your Island. So your
[53:28.860 –> 53:34.540] Island is what your Island is and you don’t that they, so it’s quite, they’re quite limited in farm
[53:34.540 –> 53:41.820] space and there’s no way to get more. That would be nice. So I want to go be nice to get like a
[53:41.820 –> 53:48.460] second Island or something. Yeah, it depends on the map. So the one I’m on second has like a,
[53:48.460 –> 53:55.660] a very small second Island that you can build a bridge out to. Um, but it’s very small. It’s like
[53:55.660 –> 54:02.780] maybe six by six or something like that. It’s not that big. It’s tiny. It is. Uh, so yeah,
[54:02.780 –> 54:07.660] it’d be nice to either be able to expand onto other islands or, or terraform of some kind,
[54:07.660 –> 54:12.700] right? Like it’d be nice to be able to do something like that. Um, that would, I think,
[54:12.700 –> 54:19.020] make it, make it a bit more fun. So I guess I’ll get into some more of the details. Some of the
[54:19.020 –> 54:24.380] things I might explain a bit more now. So the tutorial is pretty good. I like the tutorial.
[54:24.940 –> 54:32.060] Um, it does an interesting thing where it starts off. Um, the backstory is like, you, you want to,
[54:32.380 –> 54:37.020] you see an ad for a farm, you want to buy it, right? So you go and buy it. Fine. Whatever.
[54:37.020 –> 54:42.300] As one does. It’s not particularly odd or interesting. It is what it is. Um, once you get
[54:42.300 –> 54:47.180] there, the guy who sold you, it gives you a walkie talkie and that’s how you communicate with them,
[54:47.180 –> 54:53.260] right? You never actually see him in real life, which is funny. Um, but like he says,
[54:53.260 –> 54:57.900] he says, Oh yeah, here’s our, is it the pick actually get first? I can’t remember. You get
[54:57.900 –> 55:03.740] one of the tools first and you start using it. And as you’re using it, you uncover another tool.
[55:03.740 –> 55:07.260] And when you uncover that tool, you get the little pop-up that says what you do with that tool.
[55:07.260 –> 55:11.580] So you don’t get all the tools all at once. You have to start using one of the tools to get the
[55:11.580 –> 55:16.460] next tool and then start using the next tool to get the next tool. And each time you get a tool,
[55:16.460 –> 55:19.740] it gives you a very quick description of what you do. And then you go and use that for a bit
[55:19.740 –> 55:23.340] and you get the next tool and it tells you how to do that. And you use that for a bit. It’s really
[55:23.340 –> 55:28.780] nice. It works really well. I thought it was a really nice little tutorial. Um, that explained
[55:28.780 –> 55:32.940] everything. I mean, obviously I knew everything because it’s standard tools, right? They’re not
[55:32.940 –> 55:38.460] really different in any way, but it was, it was a fun little tutorial that didn’t take too long.
[55:38.460 –> 55:44.940] And I think did things in a way that didn’t feel drawn out or awkward. Okay. Yeah, that does sound
[55:44.940 –> 55:54.700] nice. Um, it sounds like a natural flow. Um, yeah, that’s clever. The farming is, um, fine.
[55:55.820 –> 56:02.460] It’s pretty standard farming, right? You dig a hole in the ground, you plant some seeds,
[56:02.460 –> 56:08.060] you water them, they grow, you harvest them. There’s a couple of little annoyances I have
[56:08.060 –> 56:12.940] in terms of like how the controls work around that and exactly what you have to do. Um,
[56:12.940 –> 56:18.700] the, it does the thing where some farming games have done recently where you don’t have to have
[56:18.700 –> 56:25.420] a tool equipped to use it. So if you walk up to like a tree and you just press the control button,
[56:25.420 –> 56:31.340] it will get the axe out and hit it. Um, which I really like because I don’t like switching
[56:31.340 –> 56:35.340] between tools, but the problem is it doesn’t work very well. So then once you’ve done that,
[56:35.340 –> 56:39.980] you now have the axe equipped and if you go to something else, it will never change that.
[56:39.980 –> 56:44.780] So if you equip a tool, it won’t change it. If you go up without a tool equipped,
[56:44.780 –> 56:49.820] it will use the right tool, but now you have that tool equipped. So it won’t change it again.
[56:49.820 –> 56:55.340] So you have to unequip the tool for that to happen again. You know, it’s just like a little bit
[56:56.700 –> 57:01.740] weird way to do that. Almost there. Yes, that’s exactly what it’s almost there,
[57:01.820 –> 57:09.900] but it’s, it’s just not ideal. Um, yeah. I don’t think there’s anything really special
[57:09.900 –> 57:16.060] to say about the farming. It’s fine. It’s like, if you’ve done farming in other games,
[57:16.060 –> 57:21.420] this will be pretty standard to you. Um, the crafting is pretty fine. Um, it’s like animal
[57:21.420 –> 57:25.260] crossing farming, but it has bulk farming, but sorry, it’s like animal crossing crafting,
[57:25.260 –> 57:31.100] but it has bulk crafting. So there you go. Better already. Well, there you go. Flexing.
[57:31.900 –> 57:37.020] Um, there again, as with everything, there seem to be some weirdness with the controls
[57:37.020 –> 57:41.820] where when you press right on the control pad, it will sometimes do it once. It will sometimes
[57:41.820 –> 57:46.460] do it twice. It will sometimes do it four times, right? So you have this weird, so it’s just a
[57:46.460 –> 57:50.860] little bug, which I’m sure they’ll fix soon, which is just a little bit annoying. I really
[57:50.860 –> 57:55.260] hopefully fix it soon. Cause it’s like you go, Oh, I have one. I like, I want to get five.
[57:56.060 –> 58:00.060] So you press one and takes you up to four and you press again, takes you up to six, you know,
[58:00.140 –> 58:04.380] no. So you press down. It takes you down. So then you press up and it takes you up to seven. You
[58:04.380 –> 58:07.740] press down. It takes you down to five. You’re like, finally I’m there. Right. So you just,
[58:07.740 –> 58:11.900] you’re just doing this dancing jig with the, with the crafting bench to actually get the
[58:11.900 –> 58:18.380] number that you want. Um, that’s, that’s unfortunate. That’s pretty funny though.
[58:18.380 –> 58:24.060] Hopefully that’s a very obvious bug. So we’ll get fixed soon. Um, the other thing I would say
[58:24.060 –> 58:27.340] about crafting is a little bit annoying is it doesn’t show you how many you have in your bag.
[58:27.980 –> 58:32.540] So it shows you how many you need and tells you whether you have enough. It tells you whether you
[58:32.540 –> 58:36.620] have enough, but it doesn’t tell you how many you have. So you’re like, okay, well I want to build
[58:36.620 –> 58:41.740] as many of these as I can. So you go up until it doesn’t have it. And then you go down one again
[58:41.740 –> 58:45.420] and that’s, and then you craft them and you’re like, I don’t know how many I have. I know I
[58:45.420 –> 58:50.300] have less than five, but I don’t know how that I have zero, one, two, three, or four. And yet I
[58:50.300 –> 58:53.820] have to go back into your bag to look at that. So there’s a little bit annoying, but these are all
[58:53.820 –> 58:59.580] just like small annoyances. So they have the traveling, they’re like, they’re going to other
[58:59.580 –> 59:07.020] islands like Animal Crossing does, um, which is fine. There’s not a huge variety of different
[59:07.020 –> 59:14.860] islands. So basically if you go to an island, it will have fruit trees. It will have rocks and
[59:16.540 –> 59:22.060] bushes and stuff for you to cut down and get resources. And it may or may not have a random
[59:22.060 –> 59:29.260] person with a shop for some stuff to buy. And I know it’s like really weird. They don’t have a
[59:29.260 –> 59:34.540] house there. It’s just, and the shop is like a, you know, like a stall. Yeah, it’s a stall,
[59:34.540 –> 59:37.820] it’s not a proper shop, which is fine. I don’t have it. It’s just like, why are you on this
[59:37.820 –> 59:42.780] random island with your stall? Nobody else is here. You don’t even have a house here. What are
[59:42.780 –> 59:49.340] you doing? It’s like, are you commuting to this island with your stall and just hoping random
[59:49.340 –> 59:57.420] people turn up? Um, so it’s fine, but there’s no, I’d not found any variety, right? So like
[59:57.420 –> 01:00:01.500] with Animal Crossing where you would turn up and like there would be different bugs and stuff like
[01:00:01.500 –> 01:00:05.260] that. Like that’s not really, there aren’t bugs in here, so that’s not a thing. And it’s like,
[01:00:05.260 –> 01:00:09.100] there’s no, I’ve not found anything that’s different. It may or may not have some fruit
[01:00:09.100 –> 01:00:15.020] trees. It may or may not have a stall. That’s it. Right. Like it’s fine for resource gathering,
[01:00:15.020 –> 01:00:18.940] right? Like once you’ve done everything on your island for you to do that day,
[01:00:18.940 –> 01:00:24.220] it gives you another thing to do, but it’s not particularly interesting. And I feel like they
[01:00:24.220 –> 01:00:28.380] could expand that out a lot to be much more interesting. Just like mystery tours in Animal
[01:00:28.380 –> 01:00:34.940] Crossing. Yeah. You also, you have to, initially you have to like buy what’s called travel supplies
[01:00:34.940 –> 01:00:39.660] to do it. So you have to have this item to go on it. It’s like the Nuke Miles tour, right? The
[01:00:40.620 –> 01:00:44.940] ticket. It’s like that. Um, which is a bit annoying, but then you get a crafting recipe
[01:00:44.940 –> 01:00:49.180] for it. So that was fine. I enjoyed that because it’s like the crafting recipe is like,
[01:00:49.980 –> 01:00:55.660] it’s three vegetables and three fruit and it can be any vegetables and any fruit, which is fun.
[01:00:57.420 –> 01:01:01.340] Yeah. And it makes sense logically, right? Like you’re basically, you’re packing food for you to
[01:01:01.340 –> 01:01:05.900] go, right? Like that’s why you’re just like, okay, fine. Um, it’s nice and easy. Do you get
[01:01:05.900 –> 01:01:09.420] it reasonably early on? I think I got it like a week and a half in or something like that.
[01:01:09.900 –> 01:01:14.780] And then, um, I didn’t have to buy them again because they weren’t cheap. They were like 500
[01:01:14.780 –> 01:01:18.700] or something, which isn’t ridiculously expensive, but it means you can’t do it constantly. Can’t
[01:01:18.700 –> 01:01:23.740] do it every day. But then once you’ve, you’ve unlocked the crafting recipe, you know, as with
[01:01:23.740 –> 01:01:31.740] all farming games, you’re building up quite a big patch of farm that you can farm for and you like,
[01:01:31.740 –> 01:01:36.300] not exponentially, but your money is increasing quite a lot because you farm and you sell and
[01:01:36.300 –> 01:01:40.620] then you buy more seeds than you had the last time. And so then you get more money and more
[01:01:40.620 –> 01:01:45.180] money. And then, so what this does is it just means that each time you do that, you keep behind
[01:01:45.180 –> 01:01:50.700] like nine of each and, and sell the rest. And there you’ve, you’ve got your travel supplies
[01:01:50.700 –> 01:01:58.060] until you get more, more crops. So it’s, it’s, it’s a nice, it’s a nice feature. I just feel
[01:01:58.060 –> 01:02:03.180] like it’s, it kind of like, it’s a nice idea that wasn’t like fully implemented, you know?
[01:02:03.820 –> 01:02:10.620] Yeah. I mean, I kind of do the same anyways in most farming games. I keep a supply of stuff,
[01:02:10.620 –> 01:02:16.220] usually for crafting recipes and stuff like that, but, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it’s interesting
[01:02:16.220 –> 01:02:22.060] to kind of encourage that. Um, the last kind of big thing I want to talk about is they have
[01:02:22.060 –> 01:02:27.820] what’s called the machine. So I won’t, I won’t, I won’t give away the story behind the machine,
[01:02:27.820 –> 01:02:31.660] but basically I said, like you go down to the basement and there’s a ghost there.
[01:02:32.220 –> 01:02:36.700] You then, you, you, there’s a story there in terms of you are building this machine.
[01:02:36.700 –> 01:02:42.060] I won’t tell you what the machine’s for, cause that’s story wise. But you’re, you’re building
[01:02:42.060 –> 01:02:48.540] this machine and it’s basically like the community center in Stardew. So you have boxes where you
[01:02:48.540 –> 01:02:52.540] have to put in stuff and you’re building the machine. I haven’t finished building the machine
[01:02:52.540 –> 01:02:57.180] cause it’s quite, it feels like quite a long one as well. And like the Stardew one, it feels like
[01:02:57.180 –> 01:03:02.380] it will take quite a long time to build it out. Big overarching goals. Exactly. Exactly. Um,
[01:03:02.380 –> 01:03:07.100] so it feels like it will take quite a lot of time to get to that, which is, which is good cause
[01:03:07.100 –> 01:03:11.500] it’s nice having like longterm goals in these games. Um, which is why I find it really funny.
[01:03:11.500 –> 01:03:14.140] This was, I find really funny when like the number of people who are like, there’s nothing
[01:03:14.140 –> 01:03:20.220] to do in this game besides farming. And I’m like, did you not go down to the basement? Like they
[01:03:20.220 –> 01:03:25.340] told you to a weekend? Like I don’t, like I understand why like normal people would give up
[01:03:25.340 –> 01:03:30.140] on this game really quickly if there’s not an indication of the story. But people who are
[01:03:30.140 –> 01:03:34.940] reviewing this game, did you not play for a week? Like if you’re playing a farming game and you
[01:03:34.940 –> 01:03:41.020] don’t play a week, you’re not playing that farming game, right? Like I know it takes a long time and
[01:03:41.020 –> 01:03:46.140] I very rarely get through a full year of these games before I review them, right? Because it
[01:03:46.140 –> 01:03:53.580] takes a long time, but a week, a week, especially early game in these games, you get up, you do what
[01:03:53.580 –> 01:03:58.540] you can do and then you go to bed because there’s nothing else you can do early on in these games,
[01:03:59.340 –> 01:04:04.540] especially this game, right? To get through a week maybe took me like half an hour,
[01:04:05.580 –> 01:04:11.740] play half an hour of this game. Oh, okay. That’s that quick. That’s short. Oh,
[01:04:11.740 –> 01:04:15.180] well, so it depends how you play it, right? If you’re the sort of person who like,
[01:04:15.180 –> 01:04:19.260] you’re going to like store up all of the fruit so that you can keep eating,
[01:04:19.260 –> 01:04:22.940] so you can keep having energy to do infinite amount of things in each day.
[01:04:22.940 –> 01:04:26.460] And the only reason you’ll go to sleep is because you have to go to sleep. Then it will take you a
[01:04:26.460 –> 01:04:32.300] couple of hours, right? But if you’re, if you’re like me and you’re like early on in the farming
[01:04:32.300 –> 01:04:36.220] game, I just want to get through the early game. So I will go up and I will do all of
[01:04:36.220 –> 01:04:42.140] the farming bits that I have to get the seeds and get crops so that I can then progress myself.
[01:04:42.140 –> 01:04:47.020] I will do what I need to do. I will do some chopping until all of my energy is gone and
[01:04:47.020 –> 01:04:51.420] then I will go to sleep. I’m not going to waste time staying up, right? You’ll get through it
[01:04:51.420 –> 01:04:58.540] much quicker. Okay. So yeah, I just, I find it weird that nobody that I can see reviewed this
[01:04:58.540 –> 01:05:04.300] game and talked about this bit, but there is a long term goal and everybody seems to think there
[01:05:04.300 –> 01:05:08.140] isn’t a long term goal and I don’t understand what they were doing in this game if they didn’t
[01:05:08.140 –> 01:05:15.660] come to this conclusion. Weird. So yeah, that’s weird. I don’t, that’s because obviously there’s
[01:05:15.660 –> 01:05:20.700] a sub population, but still only like an hour to get to the story. That’s, that’s wild. Yeah,
[01:05:20.700 –> 01:05:25.420] if you’re, if you’re, if you’re doing everything possible in this game, maybe it would take you
[01:05:25.420 –> 01:05:31.420] two hours to get to that point. Maybe. Okay, that’s still, you know, that’s not a lot of time
[01:05:31.420 –> 01:05:41.180] to get to that. So fine, whatever. Conclusion on this game. I think it’s fun. It’s a relatively
[01:05:41.180 –> 01:05:46.860] simple in terms of number of mechanics. I can’t speak too much for the story at this point because
[01:05:46.860 –> 01:05:50.460] I haven’t gone through a huge amount because again, I would like to point out I have had
[01:05:50.460 –> 01:05:57.420] this game for a week and Pokemon DLC came out halfway through that week. So, um, but you know,
[01:05:57.420 –> 01:06:06.220] I’ve put in, I’ve put in maybe what does steam say? I think maybe like 15 to 20 hours, something
[01:06:06.220 –> 01:06:14.460] like that, um, into the game. So I feel like I’ve got a good idea of it. Um, it’s, it’s fun.
[01:06:15.500 –> 01:06:21.580] Um, it’s not the most complex of farming games, but if you like something like Stardew and you
[01:06:21.580 –> 01:06:30.060] don’t like people, this is the game for you. That’s the weird thing about it is the characters
[01:06:30.060 –> 01:06:36.540] in this game are the guy who sells you the farm, who you only talk to on the radio a few times
[01:06:36.540 –> 01:06:42.380] because he’s telling you stuff. The ghost that lives underneath your house and unnamed
[01:06:42.380 –> 01:06:49.980] NPCs with stores on random islands. Those are the only characters in this game. Okay. So
[01:06:51.820 –> 01:06:57.260] actually question, I’m just thinking about the shops and stuff. So just because you know,
[01:06:58.140 –> 01:07:03.980] yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes. Okay. Right. Yeah. I didn’t talk about this. I should have talked
[01:07:03.980 –> 01:07:08.860] about this. So, uh, you don’t technically have a shipping bin. You have a post box.
[01:07:08.860 –> 01:07:12.780] You put stuff in the post box and they got, it’s essentially, whatever. It’s the same.
[01:07:12.780 –> 01:07:16.620] They’ve combined the post box and the shipping bin. It’s the same thing. Sure. I quite like
[01:07:16.620 –> 01:07:21.500] there’s a box. You have a little book inside your house that you buy stuff from. That’s
[01:07:21.500 –> 01:07:29.260] the general. So the guy who sold you the Island, he gives you a catalog and you buy stuff, you,
[01:07:29.260 –> 01:07:34.620] you buy stuff on there and they come the next day. Okay. Okay. Cause I was wondering like,
[01:07:34.620 –> 01:07:42.700] are you playing lottery? No, no, no, no. So the random stores will give you like
[01:07:42.700 –> 01:07:50.860] out of season stuff and like cosmetics and stuff like that. Okay. Well, this is fascinating.
[01:07:50.860 –> 01:07:58.620] There’s, it feels like there’s an idea at the core here. I wish it could be expanded,
[01:07:58.620 –> 01:08:05.580] but, um, like the solo Stardew Valley, that’s an interesting premise that can be explored.
[01:08:05.580 –> 01:08:11.420] It feels like two things in one. It feels like one, somebody went, I want to make a farming game.
[01:08:11.420 –> 01:08:16.540] So they made a farming game and they made what they know as a farming game. And two, it feels
[01:08:16.540 –> 01:08:21.500] like there was some interesting ideas in that farming game that weren’t fully fleshed out.
[01:08:22.540 –> 01:08:28.700] And it’s, it’s fine. Right? Like if you’ve got a farming game that you’re playing just now,
[01:08:28.700 –> 01:08:32.380] you’re not going to pick this up and play that instead. Right. But if you’re like,
[01:08:32.380 –> 01:08:37.500] I like farming games and I like playing new concepts and farming games, pick it up. It’s
[01:08:37.500 –> 01:08:43.260] a good fun farming game. Yeah. Like I don’t, I feel like there’s not much more else to say than
[01:08:43.260 –> 01:08:50.060] that. Well, let’s, I’m going to keep an eye on it. If you do go back to the store, I’m curious
[01:08:50.060 –> 01:08:55.100] what the machine does. Um, I’m interested to hearing like what the ghost has to do
[01:08:55.100 –> 01:08:59.820] anything and hopefully gets expansions and maybe I’ll give away what the machine does in the post
[01:08:59.820 –> 01:09:05.740] credits. All right. Cause it’s not, I’ll give it away in the course credits. All right. So
[01:09:05.740 –> 01:09:10.940] if you want to know what the machine does, come and talk and listen to the post credits.
[01:09:10.940 –> 01:09:13.820] All right. There you go. He set the hook. He set the bait on the hook.
[01:09:15.180 –> 01:09:18.300] Thank you, Kevin, for joining me. Thank you, Al, for having me on.
[01:09:19.180 –> 01:09:22.620] It’s been a day. Where can people find you on the internet?
[01:09:24.220 –> 01:09:29.900] Okay. If people want to find me, go at Koopa pres for my personal Twitter, where we mostly retweet
[01:09:29.900 –> 01:09:35.420] other funnier, smarter, more interesting people. Uh, go to at Spritersquirt. If you want to see my
[01:09:35.420 –> 01:09:39.580] art, I have been keeping up with it. I just haven’t posted it. I’ve been doing a lot of
[01:09:39.580 –> 01:09:46.540] non pixel art, like in a sketchbook. It’s wild, wild to say. Um, but, uh, I, I, yeah,
[01:09:46.540 –> 01:09:51.900] yeah, I sound like a huge nerd, but I’ve been working on a bunch of fake Mon and then I put
[01:09:51.900 –> 01:09:58.860] them into my pixely form anyways. Um, but, uh, probably more interesting than all of that. Um,
[01:09:58.860 –> 01:10:06.460] you can also find me at rainbow Mario pod. That is the Twitter handle for the show called
[01:10:06.460 –> 01:10:13.580] rainbow road radio, a Mario podcast. I do their mutual friend, Alex, uh, currently on hiatus,
[01:10:13.580 –> 01:10:19.980] but we’re halfway through September. So it’ll, we’ll be pumping out new episodes in a week or
[01:10:19.980 –> 01:10:27.260] two or so. And boy, do we have a lot to talk about? Oh yeah. What about you, Al? Uh, what are,
[01:10:27.260 –> 01:10:33.820] where do people find you? You can find me on many social media sites at the Scott bot.
[01:10:34.780 –> 01:10:40.140] Um, I don’t really use many of them a huge amount, but probably the main one would be
[01:10:40.140 –> 01:10:51.420] mastodon.scott. You can find the podcasts mainly on tumblr at ths pod. Again, also on some other
[01:10:51.420 –> 01:10:57.340] social networks that exists that may or may not be dying. You can find links to everything
[01:10:58.300 –> 01:11:02.860] for the podcast on our website. That’s the place to go if you need something,
[01:11:02.860 –> 01:11:07.980] cause that will always be around as long as the podcast is running harvest season dot club.
[01:11:08.620 –> 01:11:11.340] We don’t rely on the whims of a billionaire for that site.
[01:11:12.140 –> 01:11:20.700] Well, it feels like at some point you can find a billionaire that we’re that anyway,
[01:11:20.700 –> 01:11:25.340] if a billionaire wants to make me reliant on them and give me lots of money, I will accept that.
[01:11:25.340 –> 01:11:28.460] Uh, but I’m just saying it feels like somewhere,
[01:11:28.460 –> 01:11:33.900] some billionaire can find a way to influence. Oh, sure. Right. Okay. Yes. But if they manage
[01:11:33.900 –> 01:11:38.780] to take down my site and I can’t replace it with another identical copy, we have bigger
[01:11:38.780 –> 01:11:47.900] problems cause the internet is dead. Yeah. All right. But before the internet dies,
[01:11:47.980 –> 01:11:54.220] especially find the link to our patreon, which is patreon.com slash ths pod, where you can find,
[01:11:54.220 –> 01:12:00.780] um, you can subscribe, give me money and get access to the slack, which is where we chat about
[01:12:01.340 –> 01:12:05.260] lots of things, including some cottage core games, but also some other random things.
[01:12:05.900 –> 01:12:11.820] Mostly laughing at each other on the show. Yeah. Well, yeah. You also get some sneak
[01:12:11.820 –> 01:12:15.260] peeks as to what sometimes I post things in this lack about what’s upcoming,
[01:12:15.900 –> 01:12:18.140] some sneak peeks of things. So if you want some sneak peeks,
[01:12:18.140 –> 01:12:23.340] you can come and see some sneak peeks there and you can also get access to our bonus
[01:12:23.340 –> 01:12:29.020] episodes of the podcast called the greenhouse. Um, either having already just come out a few
[01:12:29.020 –> 01:12:35.020] days ago or coming out in a few days is our reaction to the Nintendo direct from last week.
[01:12:35.740 –> 01:12:41.980] And among other things, um, oh yeah. Also Spiderman.
[01:12:42.860 –> 01:12:48.060] Spider. No, I’m talking about other things like, oh God, I can’t remember. I don’t know.
[01:12:48.060 –> 01:12:57.340] I honestly can’t remember. It was in this podcast. I know. I know. I’m just thinking like,
[01:12:57.340 –> 01:13:04.860] oh, we, we, we go, I like to go on tangents anyways. Um, th there’s a lot of stuff in there.
[01:13:04.860 –> 01:13:08.620] Um, there’s some good bits in that. So go, go listen to that. Um,
[01:13:09.580 –> 01:13:18.460] the switch isn’t dead yet. No, not yet. Still stuff to come. Yeah. All right. That’s it.
[01:13:20.940 –> 01:13:25.260] Yep. I think that’s everything. Thank you, Kevin, for joining me. Thank you. Well,
[01:13:25.260 –> 01:13:30.460] thank you listeners for listening and until next time, have a good harvest.
[01:13:30.460 –> 01:13:40.540] The harvest season is created by Al McKinley with support from our patrons,
[01:13:40.540 –> 01:13:46.620] including our pro farmers, Kevin Stewart and Alisa. Our art is done by Micah the brave
[01:13:46.620 –> 01:13:51.020] and our music is done by Nick Burgess. Feel free to visit our website,
[01:13:51.020 –> 01:13:56.140] harvest season.club for show notes and links to things we discussed in this episode.
[01:14:04.140 –> 01:14:09.020] All right. What’s the machine do? Uh, I’ve probably hyped this up too much.
[01:14:09.020 –> 01:14:14.780] Um, just a reminder, I am about to spoil what the machine does. They’re at the
[01:14:14.780 –> 01:14:20.300] credits. They know the wild west. They might have forgotten. They might have forgotten.
[01:14:20.300 –> 01:14:26.140] Uh, it’s a seed machine. Seed maker. I’m not joking.
[01:14:28.140 –> 01:14:35.580] So basically the story is like randomly one day there’s like, uh, shooting stars that crash onto
[01:14:35.580 –> 01:14:41.740] the island and like, you’re like, Oh, this is a star fruit. I like star fruit. I want to share
[01:14:41.740 –> 01:14:46.620] star fruit with the rest of the world. And then the ghost is like, Oh, I heard about a thing
[01:14:46.620 –> 01:14:50.860] called a seed maker. And then you’re like, Oh, let’s build the seed maker. And then I can make
[01:14:50.860 –> 01:14:55.420] star fruit for everybody in the world. And then you’re like, Oh, maybe I can make other things
[01:14:55.420 –> 01:14:59.660] with this seed maker as well. And the ghost is like, Hey, calm down there. Let’s get this.
[01:15:03.100 –> 01:15:07.580] So it’s like you’re building this massive machine under your house. Like the, the,
[01:15:07.580 –> 01:15:12.140] this is the weird thing is the basement is like six times the size of your house.
[01:15:13.420 –> 01:15:19.260] And you’re building this massive machine that covers a good portion of the footprint of this
[01:15:19.260 –> 01:15:27.420] underneath your house. And it’s for making seeds. Well, there’s your DLC star fruit tycoon.
[01:15:27.420 –> 01:15:32.060] All right. I’m really intrigued as to where it goes. I just find it funny that people are like,
[01:15:32.060 –> 01:15:36.780] Oh, there’s no story and there’s nothing to do in this game. And I’m like, did you even
[01:15:36.780 –> 01:15:43.580] do anything? Like, I’m pretty sure it’s a weekend that this happens is absolutely wild. All right.

The Harvest Season

A Ghost In My Basement

Timings

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