Unhinged and Low Energy

Wed, Dec 20, 2023 Year 2, Summer 25

Al and Jonnie talk about Lego Fortnite

Timings

00:00:00: Theme Tune
00:00:30: Intro
00:01:59: What Have We Been Up To
00:15:39: News
00:37:27: Lego Fortnite
00:59:17: Outro

Tiny Garden
Tamagotchi Adventure Kingdom

Contact

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Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/

Transcript

(0:00:30) Al: Lovely. Perfect. Here we go.
(0:00:33) Al: Hello, farmers, and welcome to another episode of the harvest season.
(0:00:37) Al: My name is Al, and we’re here today to see how unhinged this podcast can be.
(0:00:38) Jonnie: And my name is Johnny.
(0:00:44) Al: It’s either going to be unhinged or it’s going to be really low energy after five minutes.
(0:00:47) Al: I’m not sure which, because it’s incredibly late for me, and for some reason I’m still doing this.
(0:00:51) Al: Here we go.
(0:00:53) Jonnie: Here we go, I’m putting down money on both.
(0:00:56) Jonnie: It’s gonna be both, it’s gonna be both.
(0:00:57) Jonnie: We’re gonna be unhinged and low energy.
(0:00:59) Al: Amazing. Perfect.
(0:01:00) Al: That’s what we need. So, for some reason, we’re going to talk about Lego Fortnite,
(0:01:06) Al: because I’m still confused by it. I’ve played a little bit of it. Johnny has played slightly more of it, and we’re going to talk a bit about that. We’ve got a bunch of news that we’re going to go through. This is your last news of the year, because the next episode has been already recorded already. And, yeah, so, if it’s not mentioned in this episode, it won’t be mentioned
(0:01:31) Al: until the second episode of next year, because the first episode of next year is being recorded this week as well. Although, I guess if something comes up between now and then, there isn’t an episode before then that we’ll be recording after then. So, therefore, if we have some news,
(0:01:42) Al: we can include it in that, but it would need to happen in the next four days.
(0:01:46) Al: And realistically, this is probably going to be a quiet week.
(0:01:50) Jonnie: Come on Al, why did you say that? We all know now there’s going to be so much news between now and Friday.
(0:01:54) Al: Anyway, so we’re going to talk about the news, but first of all, Chani, what have you been up to other than traveling?
(0:02:02) Jonnie: What have you been up to, Al?
(0:02:04) Jonnie: Yes, I’ve been traveling, but there’s this really great game that I’ve started playing. It’s called Coral Island. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it.
(0:02:12) Jonnie: And it’s really good. I think last time I was on the episode, I mentioned that there was a slight bug with the the museum and I was like I’m gonna put it down until that’s fixed and then talking about it on that episode made me think a lot about Coral Island and I went immediately straight back to play more Coral Island. The bug has apparently now been fixed since I’ve been away so I’m excited to go in and donate a whole bunch of stuff to to the museum but that game is so good it’s so so good.
(0:02:20) Al: The museum, yep.
(0:02:36) Al: Nice.
(0:02:39) Al: You’re just driving up with a dump truck and just emptying it in.
(0:02:44) Jonnie: Yeah pretty much pretty much I have so much stuff to donate I’m gonna be getting so many rewards.
(0:02:50) Jonnie: Um, I’m only at the end of spring, I think, um, but just like the diving is a cool addition.
(0:02:57) Jonnie: I like the way they do the mines. All of the characters are like super hot and also super diverse, which is like, I find it interesting that I’ve like managed to just tick so many boxes.
(0:03:09) Jonnie: And look, when you were starting to say that this is the new stardew valley, I was like,
(0:03:13) Jonnie: come on now, it won’t really be the new stardew valley. This is the new stardew valley. It’s so,
(0:03:18) Al: Right?
(0:03:20) Al: Hmm.
(0:03:21) Al: I do think that I will continue to keep going back to Stardji Valley when he adds updates.
(0:03:25) Al: But I feel like this is my new comfort game rather than Stardji.
(0:03:29) Jonnie: Yeah, I guess I guess for me, the part that I and this is only because I’m new into it is like,
(0:03:35) Jonnie: how possible is it to do different sorts of farms? You know, I still think back to the early days of this show, when you guys did the, was it the animal only? farming, farming episode?
(0:03:50) Al: I don’t have to alone.
(0:03:50) Jonnie: In Stardew, you like in Stardew, you can do lots of different challenges, right? And they are all feasible. Oh, that’s how you did the mining one. Yeah.
(0:03:52) Al: Ahh.
(0:03:55) Al: We did a- we did a mining one.
(0:04:00) Jonnie: So I’m kind of curious to see how, how easy it will be to push the challenges because the way the game is structured, it feels like you do have to do everything.
(0:04:09) Al: So, I don’t think, I think that’s the best way to play this game, but I don’t think anything requires you to do any of them. So, I think, so for example, like you might be thinking about say, the sprinklers, you need to go diving to make sprinklers. But you don’t need sprinklers, you don’t need to make sprinklers, you can still farm without sprinklers.
(0:04:32) Jonnie: I definitely need sprinklers. I don’t know. I don’t nobody got time. I
(0:04:32) Al: No, but my point is just like, I think if you want to just go and mine.
(0:04:39) Al: I think you can probably just go and mine. If you want to just go and dive, I think you can probably just go and dive. I think it would still work. It’s not necessarily the best way to play this game, but I think it is definitely possible to focus on one thing
(0:04:52) Jonnie: Yeah, I guess maybe what I’m curious about is the, and I’m not that deep into it, is their version of the community centre,
(0:04:58) Jonnie: although there’s kind of like two versions of that, that seem to require at least progressing through the mines and progressing through diving.
(0:05:08) Al: That’s true. There is no capitalism equivalent. You can’t just pay your way through the community.
(0:05:16) Jonnie: So, yeah, I just think there’s there’s so much going on in the game.
(0:05:20) Jonnie: My only real criticism so far is that the start is almost like a one for one match of Stardew Valley.
(0:05:26) Jonnie: That if I think if I hadn’t heard from you that this game is like really good,
(0:05:31) Jonnie: I may have just bounced off because it felt a little too Stardew Cloney
(0:05:37) Jonnie: because introduced like diving in those things a little bit later.
(0:05:40) Jonnie: You know, it’s like day eight, right?
(0:05:41) Jonnie: Not not that much later, but that’s still on a day-to-day perspective.
(0:05:46) Jonnie: About an hour and a half in, so I just wish there was something that happened a little bit earlier to be like no We’re not just our dude. There is more going on here
(0:05:54) Al: Yeah, I think that’s totally fair. I don’t think I would ever say this game is perfect,
(0:06:00) Al: I think this game could still be improved more. And I hope they’re going to continue to do that,
(0:06:05) Al: they do have plans to continue to do that. And I do have some other thoughts about this game that I will bring up in a future episode, so I don’t want to talk about it all just now. But
(0:06:14) Al: yeah, I think the point of a replacement for Stardew, if you will, which by that I just mean
(0:06:22) Al: what is considered the…
(0:06:24) Al: …facto of “this is what a farming game should be” or “this has pushed things forward and not taken any steps back”
(0:06:32) Al: which I do think both Stardew and this game did.
(0:06:34) Al: Um, I didn’t have an end to that sentence.
(0:06:36) Jonnie: Well, I think the key for me is that this is feeling like a game that if people are interested in the genre will replace me
(0:06:45) Jonnie: recommending statue just and I think that the visual style of that is a huge reason because I you know A lot of us like the the pixel art style, but I think this works a lot better for more modern
(0:07:00) Jonnie: It would just maybe resonate with a wider group of people
(0:07:02) Al: Yeah, I hope so. I really hope that this game does really well, because I think there’s so much more potential and, yeah, let’s not continue to talk about that too much. Great.
(0:07:12) Al: Fantastic. I’m glad you’re enjoying it. I’m glad that you were convinced by what I said and did not disagree with me on it. And maybe some other people on future podcasts that may have already been listened could listen to this and see that I’m not alone. It’s not just me that talking about it. Thank you very much.
(0:07:12) Jonnie: Great. I love yeah
(0:07:30) Jonnie: - Absolutely, but that’s all I’ve really had time for.
(0:07:32) Jonnie: So, Al, what have you been playing?
(0:07:33) Al: » Mm, good question.
(0:07:36) Al: What have I been playing?
(0:07:37) Al: Pokemon, I think.
(0:07:39) Al: It’s probably about it.
(0:07:40) Jonnie: Is the new DLC out?
(0:07:40) Al: Pokemon came out, yeah, it came out on Wednesday, I think.
(0:07:44) Al: Well, Wednesday or Thursday, depending on your time zone.
(0:07:47) Al: It’s technically Thursday here.
(0:07:49) Al: So that’s basically been my Thursday and Friday and Saturday and now Sunday.
(0:07:52) Al: That’s been basically all I’ve been playing.
(0:07:55) Al: And before that, I was just playing Pokemon because I was trying to do the Flubaby outbreaks.
(0:07:58) Al: So a lot of Pokemon.
(0:08:01) Al: I don’t really think I played any.
(0:08:02) Al: I still love this game. I think the DLC is great.
(0:08:04) Jonnie: I would recommend going to a doctor for your fluvate outbreaks.
(0:08:15) Al: And if you want more thoughts about my opinions on the DLC, then tune into It’s Super Effective two days ago when this comes out.
(0:08:24) Jonnie: I am looking forward to hearing how people feel about the DLC because I feel like after the first DLC came out everyone who was into it was kind of like well it’s more of the game and it’s not done so now that I guess it’s done I’m curious to hear what people have to say.
(0:08:34) Al: Yeah, well this this week’s episode doesn’t have the story in it. We’re just talking about the new mechanic stuff. But next week we’re going to talk about the story stuff. But yeah,
(0:08:49) Al: I mean, I really like it. It’s like, there are still fundamental issues with this game.
(0:08:54) Al: It doesn’t fix the fundamental issues with this game. But I cannot say that I haven’t had a lot of fun with this generation, even with all those.
(0:09:04) Jonnie: Yeah, I think it’s interesting because I feel like this kind of splits the wrong word.
(0:09:07) Jonnie: I feel like in the last years, I’ve leaned more into and I don’t know the right word.
(0:09:11) Jonnie: So I’m just going to say non-main series game, but like, let’s go and, uh, Legion.
(0:09:16) Jonnie: Legends Arceus.
(0:09:16) Al: the additional generation no main series games. That’s how I would describe them. I would actually, I think I would agree with you on that. Like I actually, like as much as I’ve enjoyed Scarlet and Violet, I think I did enjoy Legends more and Let’s Go. I also really enjoyed like, I mean, I mean, let’s be honest, I like all of the games they make because Because funnily enough I keep playing these games because I like these games.
(0:09:20) Jonnie: Great.
(0:09:20) Jonnie: Whatever.
(0:09:21) Jonnie: Yeah, those great.
(0:09:23) Jonnie: But I really like those games, right?
(0:09:24) Jonnie: I just want the more experimental version of Pokemon at this point.
(0:09:27) Jonnie: So, um, it’s good that everyone can get different versions, right?
(0:09:46) Al: I have always liked these games, and I suspect I always will like these games, you know?
(0:09:51) Jonnie: And do you play these games in a way where you try really hard to make it as miserable as possible to experience the game?
(0:09:51) Al: Not always, not always. I’ve only done one Professor Oak challenge this year.
(0:10:03) Al: Yeah, look, we all enjoy different things, and I enjoy some kinds of challenges like that.
(0:10:03) Jonnie: That’s still like one too many.
(0:10:14) Al: I do not enjoy the challenges that involve battling.
(0:10:16) Al: And I never will, but I do enjoy collection-based challenges.
(0:10:21) Al: And I think that Professor Oak challenges give an interesting,
(0:10:24) Al: different way of looking at it.
(0:10:26) Al: That it just, you think about the game differently, you know?
(0:10:30) Jonnie: I think Professor…
(0:10:31) Jonnie: Yeah, I think they made sense up until, you know, Scarlet or Violet, where…
(0:10:40) Jonnie: How many do you have to get before you can even challenge the first gym?
(0:10:43) Al: It was like 600 or something.
(0:10:47) Jonnie: See?
(0:10:48) Jonnie: It’s just an unreasonable number.
(0:10:50) Al: Like it was basically all of them, right?
(0:10:52) Al: I think there were maybe 20 Pokémon that you couldn’t get before the first gym, and most of them were post-game.
(0:10:58) Al: So it’s like you catch almost all of the Pokémon, and then you do all of the gyms basically.
(0:11:05) Al: And then I think there’s maybe, so there’s a couple of them that you have to unlock,
(0:11:10) Al: the different traversal options like there’s some that only spawn on a
(0:11:13) Al: specific island, but it’s like two. So you’re like, okay, I can catch 600 Pokemon. And then I’ll do three of the, three of the traversal based things. And then I can catch two more Pokemon. And then I do all of the gyms. It was fun. I really liked it. It was obviously very different to other ones. So just because you like, uh, a Professor Oak challenge in one of the more traditional Pokemon games, right, where you’re
(0:11:43) Al: like, here’s an area, defeat the gym leader, here’s an area, defeat the gym leader, more linear games. I love how we call that traditional. It’s like the first games weren’t like that.
(0:11:54) Al: Even if you just because you like that doesn’t mean you’ll like it this way. But I do think that the kind of person who likes one is going to like the other as well. Right. Like actually,
(0:12:04) Al: what I really liked about that was you can, if you get bored training up a Pokemon, you can go catch another one, like go to the other other end of the map and go catch some different
(0:12:13) Al: Pokemon. Like you’re not the problem with like traditional Professor Oak challenges.
(0:12:18) Al: Like if I did a brilliant diamond one when they came out and oh my word was that horrific to start with because you have to evolve your starter to like you get have to get them to level 36 and you have to get another Pokemon to like level 42 all before the first gym.
(0:12:36) Al: That’s dreadful. Right. Whereas at least in this game, you can like go all over the map and try lots of different things.
(0:12:43) Al: Most of the time, you’re catching Pokémon.
(0:12:46) Al: You don’t have to evolve many Pokémon, because most Pokémon spawn in the wild.
(0:12:50) Jonnie: So I don’t want to enable this anymore, but I’m going to.
(0:12:56) Jonnie: I feel like this sort of concept, but if it was like a fourth path, so obviously in Skyline Violet you had the three different paths that were tied to the three characters.
(0:13:03) Al: Mmm, yes.
(0:13:05) Jonnie: I feel like if there was a fourth path that was tied to the number of Pokémon that you have collected and there was some form of progression locked behind it,
(0:13:15) Jonnie: that could actually be quite compelling because the thing that you know kind of makes it disjointed for me is
(0:13:20) Jonnie: you go around and you’re basically you know the greatest trainer that’s ever lived before you’ve challenged a gym and then you show up to the gym and they’re like “oh hi you’re probably terrible” and you know you steamroll them so I would really like it if that was like a fourth path and doesn’t need to be at the same level but some form of progression locked behind it might be quite cool
(0:13:29) Al: Yeah, yeah.
(0:13:40) Al: interesting idea because like very rarely in Pokemon games is anything of note locked behind Pokemon collection, which seems a bit odd right? Like in the first games, is there anything that’s locked behind Pokemon progression, like collecting Pokemon? Oh that’s true, that’s true. Yeah, you get like the item finder and the… what’s the other one?
(0:13:56) Jonnie: Yes. There’s the research assistants that show up and if you’ve got a certain number they give you…
(0:14:10) Jonnie: and a few other things that we will remember as soon as we log off to school.
(0:14:11) Al: Yeah, I can’t remember. Anyway, yes, no, you’re right. Absolutely. The XP share was one of them.
(0:14:18) Al: Yeah, no, you’re right, you’re right. But I think that’s very little, right? And you don’t need those things. The only one I think you need is you do get flash as one of them. So actually,
(0:14:30) Jonnie: Yes, that’s the first one I think, right?
(0:14:32) Al: now that I think about it, I don’t think it’s the first one. I think one of the other ones is not important. It doesn’t matter. Let’s not get sidetracked.
(0:14:40) Al: It’s late. And there’s probably listeners going, “Please, please do get sidetracked.”
(0:14:48) Al: That, I feel like, has really been repeated. Like, it is weird how the first games had that,
(0:14:55) Al: right? They had this idea of there are some things locked back, but most of the time it’s like, “Oh,
(0:14:59) Al: in Scarlet and Violet, it’s like, oh, you’ve got some rewards, but it’s like, here’s some candy,
(0:15:07) Al: And here’s some balls. And, you know, it’s not.
(0:15:10) Al: Nothing locked behind it. It’s all just kind of like additional items.
(0:15:14) Al: Yeah, anyway, it’s an interesting point for such a collection focused game.
(0:15:19) Al: They don’t lock anything really behind the collection of those creatures.
(0:15:26) Al: Very interesting. Anyway, we’re not here to talk about Pokemon.
(0:15:29) Al: That’s the other podcast I’m on this week.
(0:15:33) Al: We’re here to talk about farming games and cottage.
(0:15:37) Al: We’re here to talk about other games.
(0:15:39) Al: So we’re going to talk about some new.
(0:15:40) Al: News.
(0:15:44) Al: Above Snakes has a new update coming out.
(0:15:47) Al: It’s called the Most Wanted Update and it’s got some new biomes.
(0:15:53) Al: It’s got some new missions feature.
(0:15:56) Al: It’s got some new items and more.
(0:16:00) Al: And that is out now.
(0:16:02) Al: I was going to say, if you’re listening to this after it comes out.
(0:16:06) Al: But of course you are.
(0:16:07) Al: Of course you’re listening to this after it comes out.
(0:16:09) Al: Johnny, it’s not out for you yet.
(0:16:10) Al: Everybody else is out for you.
(0:16:14) Jonnie: Congratulations, everyone else.
(0:16:17) Al: Congratulations, people from the future.
(0:16:21) Jonnie: Yeah, I don’t know. I feel like Above Snakes kind of came out, and I haven’t really heard much about it.
(0:16:26) Jonnie: Like, I’m still interested in playing it, but in the same way I feel like I’m interested in playing a lot of games I never actually get to, so…
(0:16:34) Al: It’s certainly not pumping its way up the list.
(0:16:39) Jonnie: No, and yeah. And this content patch doesn’t really
(0:16:39) Al: This is the problem, right?
(0:16:45) Jonnie: seem to add anything that’s like, “Oh, okay, this looks like it’s getting really, really good,” and makes me sort of excited to jump in.
(0:16:50) Jonnie: But good to see that they’re still supporting me.
(0:16:53) Al: Speaking of games with updates that I haven’t played yet and they haven’t really encouraged me to play it, SteamWorld Build have a new update called the Jingle Bolts update which by the way, great name, love it, perfect. No notes.
(0:17:06) Jonnie: I have one note. But it’s mostly that. Look, I’m kind of just over Christmas-like seasonal updates in games. I get why they do them, but haven’t we done them all
(0:17:16) Al: Well, this is a winter update.
(0:17:20) Al: “The update transforms your mining town from a western wilderness to a snowy winter wonderland with all the festive spirit.”
(0:17:28) Al: Intrate. So yeah, I wonder if this is…
(0:17:32) Al: So we have two kinds of games with seasons.
(0:17:34) Al: We have the games with seasons where they are based on how long you’ve played in the game.
(0:17:38) Al: And there are the ones which are based on real life.
(0:17:42) Al: and I cannot tell on this what this is like
(0:17:46) Al: is it just all the games for this next month are all winter?
(0:17:49) Jonnie: I cannot tell either.
(0:17:51) Jonnie: I also don’t really know, like, I don’t quite get what Steam mode build is, if I’m being entirely honest.
(0:17:56) Al: it’s a city builder that I mean that’s that’s all it that’s I mean that that’s all it is you know you it might be a good one i’m not sure i’ve not played it I don’t really like city builders anymore i’ve come to accept that um they they don’t have any dates on this as to when like not like ublets had a winter event and they’re like oh it’s live between these dates
(0:17:57) Jonnie: Yeah.
(0:17:58) Jonnie: Great.
(0:18:16) Al: I can’t see anything about this being live between particular dates so i’m not sure what the deal is with that or is this like a mode that you turn on I can’t tell they don’t seem to say
(0:18:26) Jonnie: Communication seems not, but they are saying, however this one works, they are planning more seasonal updates in 2024. Speaking of more, uh, so 2.0 is out. Al, how does this rate in your, um,
(0:18:28) Al: yeah I don’t know
(0:18:33) Al: yep so if you like this look forward to more
(0:18:38) Al: fae farm
(0:18:44) Jonnie: uh, desire for patch number updates to follow some sort of patch?
(0:18:50) Al: I think they could drop the third number from it, like I don’t know why it needs to be 2.0.0 because I think they’re proving to this that when they add more content to the game, they’re increasing the main number and therefore they could just have “This is version 2” and then the update that gives bug fixes is 2.1.
(0:19:09) Al: I don’t think they need the third number, but they’re doing a lot better than a lot of other developers are.
(0:19:15) Al: This is pretty close, thank you for actually increasing the first number because nobody ever seems to do that in-
(0:19:20) Al: games. They have it zero for early access, they hit 1.0, and then it’s always one point something forever, and it drives me insane.
(0:19:30) Jonnie: And it feels like there’s actually a sizable update here to go with it. So coasts of croquia
(0:19:34) Al: Come on, we’re not here to actually talk about the content, we’re here to talk about version numbers!
(0:19:41) Jonnie: We don’t want to spend an hour talking about it because I know we could
(0:19:47) Jonnie: So yeah coast coasts of croquia I
(0:19:52) Jonnie: Don’t really
(0:19:54) Jonnie: Know what this means in terms of what has been added. I assume it’s a new
(0:20:00) Jonnie: a new location
(0:20:02) Al: that it is. It’s a new location that you access by going through a portal inside the mouth of a giant frog.
(0:20:09) Jonnie: Great, I mean that that makes as much sense as anything else in TAFE.
(0:20:15) Al: It does, it’s perfect. I love it. So yeah, the new area is called Croquier and there’s a bunch of stuff in there. I haven’t looked about features and stuff like that. I suspect it’s mostly focused on story.
(0:20:28) Jonnie: Yeah, and a lot of the like, I assume there’s quite a bit of story attached to it and it looks like there’s a lot of sort of quality of life updates that they’re making alongside this, this update.
(0:20:40) Jonnie: Unfortunately, the one thing that I don’t really see in this list is much around improving the characters, like there is a section called world as welding characters.
(0:20:52) Jonnie: It’s, you know, there is there is one line that all vendors and NPCs now have new and unique dialogue rather than using the same.
(0:20:58) Jonnie: And it’s a shared pool of lines. The problem with those original lines is they were so bad that it’s like, well, I’m not I’m not sure that the writing just has felt missing in this game for a long time so I’m not sure it’s enough to kind of lure me there.
(0:21:02) Al: Yeah, there’s now you’re going to see more of the same repeated lines that you don’t care about.
(0:21:19) Al: Yeah, it doesn’t really feel like the most amazing update that we would be wanting for
(0:21:25) Jonnie: Yeah, I think I think given how like because I’ve heard that feedback in a number of places, you know, Cody and I talked about it
(0:21:32) Jonnie: from a news article last week And so I feel like given how big of a criticism it has been when it’s actually fixed It’s something that they will put front and center
(0:21:42) Al: Yeah, or they might just not. So like part of my thing is, I don’t want to talk about this too much just now because I do talk about it in next week’s episode, but I think they never really wanted to do relationships in this game and they didn’t really care about like the NPCs in the village, but they felt like they needed to add that sort of feature in and therefore that’s what we got. And they like the other aspects of the game and the the other aspects of the game are good.
(0:22:12) Al: And they’re just going to continue with that and ignore the one that they never wanted to do in the first place.
(0:22:17) Jonnie: That makes quite a bit of sense.
(0:22:21) Jonnie: Anything else in the patch notes that stand out to you that sound interesting?
(0:22:25) Al: Not particularly. I agree with you about the quality of life improvements sound good.
(0:22:30) Al: I haven’t had enough time in the game to be like, “Oh yes, that one in particular is really going to make my gameplay more enjoyable because I’m spending too much time in Carl Island realistically.”
(0:22:45) Al: Looks good. Keep at it. Keep more updates. And there are two more currently planned,
(0:22:50) Al: two more DLCs that I know of. I wonder whether they’ll add more in the future
(0:22:56) Al: but just a reminder, if you have this on Switch, you will have the DLC added on automatically.
(0:23:01) Al: If you bought the deluxe version on Steam, you will have this automatically. If you bought the base one on Steam, you’ll have to buy the DLC separate. Garden Galaxy, a new update.
(0:23:12) Al: I mean, it just feels like it’s yet another Garden Galaxy update. If the other Garden Galaxy updates haven’t enticed you to play the game, this one’s not going to do either but there’s More items. There you go.
(0:23:22) Jonnie: yep and I feel like every time I look at god and galaxy i’m like that’s right I really need to play this game and then I forget about it until next time i’m on the show and they have another update and the cycle resets itself yep I agree
(0:23:28) Al: The new items look cool, that’s all. It’s out now, again, comes out today, the day the episode comes out.
(0:23:43) Al: So if you like Garden Galaxy, go get that update, go get your more items.
(0:23:48) Al: Travellers Rest also have a new update. Everybody’s releasing updates in December. What is this nonsense?
(0:23:54) Al: It is out now and it contains a new crop system.
(0:23:58) Al: The new crops have specific seasons in which they can be planted.
(0:24:03) Al: In addition, they need to be watered every three days for them to grow.
(0:24:06) Al: The amount of time each crop takes to grow varies.
(0:24:09) Al: Fruit trees no longer need to be planted in tilled soil.
(0:24:11) Al: Don’t require watering and they never die, although the only bare fruits.
(0:24:15) Al: I mean, none of this seems like fundamentally different from other farming games,
(0:24:19) Al: except for you don’t have to water them every day, which is interesting.
(0:24:24) Jonnie: I think that’s quite cool, like that’s a mechanic that makes a lot of sense, right? Not every plant needs to be watered the same amount, so that’s a cool little addition, but in general I still feel about Traveller’s Rest that it’s a little bit too much, just like everything else.
(0:24:38) Jonnie: And I wish it was worth it.
(0:24:38) Al: Yes, and I’m constantly fascinated as to what this game had when it came into early access,
(0:24:43) Al: because every time there’s an update I’m like “oh so we didn’t have that either?”
(0:24:48) Al: What did this game have when his first version came out? The first version came out three years ago.
(0:24:54) Jonnie: Oh my god.
(0:24:56) Al: July 2020 apparently.
(0:24:59) Jonnie: Well in three more years when 1.0 comes out we probably won’t have time to
(0:25:04) Al: Well definitely not, because this was the one that like a few months ago they came out with the
(0:25:09) Al: tavern. Like they actually then drinks and staff, that’s what it was, in September they came out with drinks and I’m like “this is a game about a tavern and you didn’t have drinks? What did you have?”
(0:25:22) Al: I’m so confused.
(0:25:27) Al: So yeah there’s new crops, new weather phenomena, chances of rain, thunderstorms, snow and wind,
(0:25:35) Al: which will affect animals and crops. Okay, and new crops and…
(0:25:38) Jonnie: Yep, sounds like a content update for the game.
(0:25:38) Al: recipes. Yep. Yes, it’s starting to sound like it might have some of the features of starchy phyline.
(0:25:48) Jonnie: And if you’ve been playing Traveler’s Rest in Early Access, and you have some thoughts on it,
(0:25:52) Jonnie: send them to us, we would love to know a little bit about it,
(0:25:54) Jonnie: because as you can tell, we are utterly fascinated every time this game has an update.
(0:25:58) Al: What did you do in this game? I wanted to know what people have been doing in this game.
(0:26:04) Al: A last song. Is this the underwater one where you’re like trying to make get rid of
(0:26:13) Jonnie: corruptiony stuff. You don’t really know what it is. Pollution.
(0:26:13) Al: bad stuff? What’s the word I’m looking for? Pollution. Pollution.
(0:26:20) Al: I think we’ve talked about this one before. Anyway, they have a new trailer.
(0:26:24) Jonnie: It looks cute and I assume there’s going from the looks of the trailer There’s some sort of rhythm element so that immediately eliminates me from being able to play this
(0:26:35) Al: Yeah, it’s still coming out next year. Ever After Falls also have a new trailer. Apparently this is a backers only update, apologies. So they have a new trailer and they’ve released a beta, which some Kickstarter backers can get.
(0:26:54) Jonnie: Great. So I much prefer beta than early access, right? Like it’s the, you know, much clearer that you’re paying for something or you’re getting access to something that is not finished, so.
(0:26:55) Al: Yeah.
(0:26:58) Al: Thank you.
(0:27:06) Al: I don’t think we need to get into that debate again today.
(0:27:09) Jonnie: We do not, but I just like, I feel like I haven’t seen a beta announcement in a long time, so I’m
(0:27:15) Al: Yeah, Snacko did that.
(0:27:17) Al: They had an alpha and a beta and now they’re in early access.
(0:27:21) Jonnie: Okay, I don’t like that.
(0:27:25) Al: Yeah, I mean, I also think it’s a pretty polished game as of now.
(0:27:30) Al: Anyway, yeah, let’s not get into that.
(0:27:32) Al: We’ve got two new games to talk about, and I don’t know whether…
(0:27:36) Al: If you’ve got a list of LEGO Fortnite, Hello Kitty Adventure,
(0:27:42) Al: Hello Kitty Island Adventure, and these two games that we’re going to talk about on a list,
(0:27:49) Al: I don’t know which I would say was the most likely one I would expect,
(0:27:53) Al: and which is the least likely one I would expect, and I’m very fascinated as to all of these.
(0:27:58) Al: The first one is called Tiny Garden, and the way I’ve described this is,
(0:28:01) Al: it’s basically Polly Pocket farming. Did you ever have Polly Pockets when you were younger, Johnny?
(0:28:06) Jonnie: So I have a niece who’s five, and she has Polly Pockets right now.
(0:28:11) Jonnie: And I have played a lot of Polly Pocket in the last month.
(0:28:13) Al: Are these still a thing? I’m so happy they’re still a thing. That’s fantastic.
(0:28:15) Jonnie: They are still a thing.
(0:28:16) Jonnie: Yep.
(0:28:17) Jonnie: They are very much still a thing, and this gives big Polly Pocket vibes.
(0:28:21) Al: It’s exactly what it is. You’ve got this little thing that you open up,
(0:28:26) Al: and it’s a little world inside this little presumably handheld thing, and it looks really interesting.
(0:28:34) Jonnie: I like the idea, so there’s a little crank on the side, and the crank is moving time.
(0:28:39) Al: Is that moving time?
(0:28:42) Jonnie: Yeah, so that being like the idea that you’ve got a limited space, you plan stuff out, you turn the crank, and stuff happens over time is…
(0:28:52) Jonnie: That seems like quite a cool little mechanic, like this just has a really great little look for a kind of idyllish, cozy game.
(0:29:02) Al: I need this on the Playdate.
(0:29:06) Jonnie: I was thinking that this would be a great Playdate thing,
(0:29:08) Jonnie: because the crank seems like a key feature, and…
(0:29:12) Al: It would need a fundamental rethink about the graphics, because the graphics are way too complicated for the Playdate. But this could be great on the Playdate. Because they’ve already got the crank, right? Because the problem with the Playdate is figuring out what your mechanic with the crank going to be. And they have an interesting, unique feature, which so many games are just like, “Oh, let me just do this one. Like, let me think up the feature for the crank later,
(0:29:38) Al: rather than let me have our- Oh, I like this.
(0:29:42) Jonnie: Yeah, and yeah, sorry just to fill in the blanks, so the gameplay looks like on the base of the Polly Pocket is where you’re doing all of your farming and you’re growing vegetables, which in the tweet they say you sell to then add furniture to what would be the upper level, I guess, or the bit that sort of sits vertically, which I think is just a great concept, but this is in prototype, so I didn’t see anything like any, even like a tentative release date.
(0:30:11) Al: Yeah, no, there’s absolutely nothing about that or any ideas, it’s just this is a “here’s a first thought” and like “come follow us and we’ll tell you more about it later” sort of thing.
(0:30:22) Al: I’m just tweeting at them to tell them to put it on Playdate.
(0:30:26) Al: So next we have Tamagotchi Adventure Kingdom.
(0:30:31) Jonnie: Woo! I’m very excited about this one, Al.
(0:30:33) Al: And so, well, so tell me why you’re excited about this one and why it’s different from
(0:30:41) Al: Lookitty, other than just “it’s Tamagotchi”, which doesn’t really have characters, I might add.
(0:30:47) Jonnie: Yeah, look, I don’t really want like, so brains are stupid, right?
(0:30:54) Jonnie: And you’re right, Tamagotchi had zero characters. But you know what Tamagotchi had?
(0:30:59) Jonnie: An important place in my life and everyone just referred to Tamagotchi. So when I see Tamagotchi and it’s a farming game, I’m like, yeah, I’m on board. I want all of this, even though there is no connection to anything else that’s happening in the game, other than the word Tamagotchi.
(0:31:15) Jonnie: and it looks great.
(0:31:17) Jonnie: So I just didn’t grow up with Hello Kitty, so that one I’m just like, “Meh, I don’t really have any connection to this.”
(0:31:23) Jonnie: Tamagotchi though, that word triggers a thing in my brain apparently.
(0:31:26) Al: So the important question is, are you subscribing to Apple Arcade for this?
(0:31:31) Jonnie: Uh, I mean…
(0:31:32) Al: You can drive a car!
(0:31:33) Jonnie: The- [laughs]
(0:31:34) Al: Ah!
(0:31:36) Al: Oh, no.
(0:31:38) Jonnie: The long answer I want to say is no, but the short answer is yes, I will probably sign up to Apple Arcade to play Tamagotchi Adventure Kingdom.
(0:31:44) Al: You can, you can drive a car.
(0:31:48) Al: What was that?
(0:31:49) Al: There’s a little random…
(0:31:51) Al: Oh, there’s a squirrel.
(0:31:51) Al: It’s a squirrel.
(0:31:53) Al: There’s like a what looks like a kind of weird.
(0:31:56) Al: Version of the, you know, the, you know, the carriage in what’s the fate of the Disney story with the, the glass slipper, what’s that one? Cinderella. You know, they’re like pumpkin carriage in that. It’s like a pink version of that near the end next to what looks like a big castle. You see that?
(0:32:06) Jonnie: Cinderella?
(0:32:08) Jonnie: Mm-hmm.
(0:32:18) Jonnie: Ah, yeah, so I missed that the first time I watched through but yeah, you’re right. That is very
(0:32:24) Jonnie: Yeah, that’s it. That’s a castle. That’s definitely a carriage
(0:32:30) Jonnie: So minor thing I love that the
(0:32:33) Jonnie: Dates that you’ve got written down here is coming Jan 4th in the trailer. They say
(0:32:38) Jonnie: Expected January 4th, which if that doesn’t mean it’s not coming on January 4th. I don’t know what
(0:32:40) Al: Yeah, I will say though, the description on YouTube does say “coming” rather than “expected”.
(0:32:52) Al: I wonder if it’s meant to be a pun.
(0:32:54) Al: I don’t know.
(0:32:55) Al: Like, is this a Tamagotchi thing?
(0:32:57) Al: When it’s…
(0:32:58) Al: Because your Tamagotchi comes in as an egg first, right?
(0:33:02) Al: And so when you have like a child, or you’re pregnant, you say you’re expecting.
(0:33:08) Al: And so if you have an egg that’s going to hurt.
(0:33:10) Al: Which would you say you’re expecting as well?
(0:33:11) Al: Is that what they’re doing here?
(0:33:12) Jonnie: I don’t know. We’ll need to bring in someone that’s laid an egg and ask them what they…
(0:33:18) Al: I’m just saying, like, I think I think it’s a pun rather than a, hey,
(0:33:22) Al: we might not release on this date.
(0:33:22) Jonnie: Right, well if it is a pun, it’s not a very good one. But everything else in this game looks pretty good.
(0:33:27) Al: Because they, well, I agree, I agree.
(0:33:29) Al: It’s not a good pun, but my point is this released on the 12th of December, right?
(0:33:33) Al: If they don’t know it’s coming out on the 4th of January, it’s not coming out on
(0:33:36) Al: of January, because that is like three.
(0:33:40) Al: work days before the 4th of January, basically.
(0:33:44) Jonnie: Not in America.
(0:33:44) Al: Like that is basically no time.
(0:33:47) Jonnie: In America, it’s like 100 work days between the two.
(0:33:52) Al: You’re assuming that this is worked on by Americans?
(0:33:55) Jonnie: Yes.
(0:33:55) Al: It was Bandai Namco, they’re a Japanese developer.
(0:33:58) Jonnie: Whatever, they’re all the same.
(0:34:01) Al: Japan, America, who can tell the difference?
(0:34:06) Jonnie: I mean, ultimately this just looks like a game where cute animals run around a thing.
(0:34:10) Jonnie: like it to me it sounds or seems.
(0:34:12) Jonnie: I watch like the Hello Kitty Island adventure so I don’t actually have high expectations for the game itself but you know Tamagotchi.
(0:34:20) Al: I’m going to end up comparing this to Hello Kitty Island Adventure, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m sorry, it’s just going to have to happen. Because it looks like a very similar game, it looks like there’s exploration, the kind of the world looks kind of very, they evoke the same imagery. Why does that pool have a face on it? Go to eight seconds in when he’s like chopping up the wood. You can see why does that have a face on it? Is that
(0:34:26) Jonnie: I think you should yeah yeah.
(0:34:41) Jonnie: Why would it not have a face on it?
(0:34:46) Jonnie: Oh, yeah, it does have a face.
(0:34:49) Jonnie: Why would it not have a face?
(0:34:51) Jonnie: Yeah, and I think even like in the first two seconds, there’s another pool and maybe it’s the same one that you can also see the face on it.
(0:34:57) Jonnie: Maybe all of the pools are alive.
(0:34:58) Al: No, that’s a different one.
(0:35:00) Jonnie: Yeah, yeah.
(0:35:02) Jonnie: So look, the pools are alive.
(0:35:03) Jonnie: I have the one in the house also has a face.
(0:35:05) Jonnie: All of the pools in this game are alive.
(0:35:07) Jonnie: And that makes me even more excited.
(0:35:09) Jonnie: I feel like sometime in 2024, we’re gonna–
(0:35:11) Jonnie: I need to do the Hello Killy Island adventure versus Tamagotchi Adventure Kingdom Ultimate Showdown Smackdown.
(0:35:17) Jonnie: You know, many can be on, I can be on, and we can just argue for hours over which of these cute little games is–
(0:35:23) Al: Yeah, I just, I guess my worry about this is that it might feel a bit hollow because the characters won’t really exist. Like, unless they do something really well and they go “we’re going to create all these characters out of thin air and you’re going to care about them now” feels unlikely.
(0:35:39) Al: Like that’s really hard to do.
(0:35:39) Jonnie: See these characters? These characters are super cute though, so it could happen.
(0:35:43) Al: Sure. But then it’s just the same thing, it’s just they’re all cute, which doesn’t really work.
(0:35:50) Jonnie: I’m going to point you to like every Ooblets episode because that’s all those those little doofuses have going on and you guys Love that stupid game
(0:35:56) Al: Well, sure.
(0:35:58) Jonnie: Also at one point one of these characters smashes a rock by just bashing his head into it if that’s not amazing
(0:36:05) Al: I will say that the Ooblets are not the thing you play Ooblets for.
(0:36:08) Al: There’s a lava lamp as well.
(0:36:09) Al: Toadstool table.
(0:36:12) Jonnie: Honestly, this trailer’s ridiculous. It’s, what, 30 seconds? I’ve probably watched it 20 times now,
(0:36:16) Jonnie: and every time I feel like I see something new that makes me more excited to play this game.
(0:36:20) Al: going to make me play this game aren’t you? Oh he does just smash his head into it, that’s adorable.
(0:36:22) Jonnie: I don’t have to make you at this point. It’s just gonna happen.
(0:36:32) Al: Now the question is do I do I sign up to Apple Arcade just now and play the Sonic game until then? Or do I wait and just play this? Tamagotchi Island Adventure, sorry, Adventure Kingdom.
(0:36:40) Jonnie: Don’t play the Sonic game, Al. Don’t do that to yourself.
(0:36:43) Jonnie: Why do Sonic fans insist on hurting themselves?
(0:36:51) Al: I don’t get better names.
(0:36:54) Jonnie: No, it’s all just word salad, don’t they just like, I think they do it Madlib style.
(0:36:57) Al: I mean it really does feel like you’ve got adventure in there and you’ve got the name of your
(0:37:03) Al: franchise and then another random one. Why am I surprised there was a castle? It’s called Adventure Kingdom. It’s like being surprised that Hello Kitty Island Adventure has the sea.
(0:37:13) Jonnie: I think because we’re so used to just glossing over the terrible names that we have to deal with in Cottagecore games that it’s just, we don’t assume that they’re not, they don’t need to.
(0:37:22) Al: It’s just words. I think this is the first time I’ve parsed the words and what they actually mean.
(0:37:28) Al: All right, we’re going to talk about Lego Fortnite. The good thing about doing this episode is it means that I don’t have to think about it again after today.
(0:37:35) Jonnie: You and me both.
(0:37:36) Al: OK, so Lego Fortnite. We talked about this a little bit in last week’s episode and next week’s episode. Just to confuse you. Spoilers.
(0:37:49) Al: But for some reason, LEGO added in a-
(0:37:52) Al: No, Fortnite added in a LEGO version of their game into their game, except that it’s not a version of the game.
(0:38:00) Al: It’s LEGO Minecraft. It’s Minecraft if LEGO did it. And for some reason, inside Fortnite.
(0:38:04) Jonnie: In Fortnite.
(0:38:06) Jonnie: Well, I mean, to hit on some reason for just a little bit.
(0:38:10) Jonnie: This is about Fortnite becoming a platform and not just a game anymore, right?
(0:38:10) Al: Oh, there you go then.
(0:38:15) Jonnie: Because they released LEGO Fortnite, some racing game and some rhythm game all at the same time.
(0:38:21) Jonnie: That are all in Fortnite, but they’re not Fortnite, so.
(0:38:24) Al: Yeah, but why? Why are they not separate games?
(0:38:28) Jonnie: Because Fortnite, my assumption is that Fortnite has become such a compelling brand that.
(0:38:34) Jonnie: They believe that they can, people will play it if it’s in, or more likely to play it if it is in Fortnite.
(0:38:41) Jonnie: So this is kind of proving that you could sell other games in Fortnite.
(0:38:46) Jonnie: So you might have, can you imagine? You have like, what’s the original thing that Fortnite was?
(0:38:50) Jonnie: Like Fortnite saved the world or whatever?
(0:38:52) Jonnie: Imagine if that comes back as a new game in Fortnite that people pay money for.
(0:38:57) Jonnie: That’s the future we could see.
(0:38:57) Al: But you’re not paying for them either, it’s free.
(0:39:02) Jonnie: Well, these are free right but this is this is proving like this proves out the case of whether you want people to buy stuff or it just provides more versions of cosmetics for people to buy in Fortnite. Like it just expands the the number of hours that people would play in a Fortnite owned thing.
(0:39:19) Al: But I-
(0:39:25) Al: So, okay, sure, but they didn’t need to be the same game to do that. This is what I’m confused-
(0:39:30) Jonnie: To me, I think it’s the difference between like, you don’t have to go and actively download a different thing, like, you’re thinking about this, like an adult that’s grew up, grown up on Steam, and, you know, you know, storefronts and used to going and buying games everywhere else, if all you’ve done is play a lot of Fortnite, and then in your Fortnite client, they say, download this new game, LEGO Fortnite, that’s the, that’s the thing, like, that’s your storefront is Fortnite.
(0:39:58) Al: This is because of Roblox, isn’t it? Because Roblox is exactly this. It is not necessarily,
(0:40:04) Al: well, it’s not exactly this, it’s different because you can add user-generated games to it.
(0:40:10) Al: But I feel like this is in response to Roblox because Fortnite was a game, Roblox was a platform,
(0:40:17) Al: and now Fortnite is also a platform. Just because it’s not user-generated stuff doesn’t mean it’s not the same thing.
(0:40:24) Jonnie: - Yeah, I agree.
(0:40:25) Jonnie: And I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re trying to hit down the path of getting user generated stuff in there as well.
(0:40:33) Al: Oh, Jai’s. All right, cool. So we’ve gone over the for some reason. Do you want to start?
(0:40:41) Al: You’ve been playing it?
(0:40:42) Jonnie: Yeah, like I guess I’ll start with I’m not a big survival game person in general, so
(0:40:50) Jonnie: Like I wasn’t expecting for me to love it and I found the survival aspects quite difficult I died quite a bit more than I have in like Minecraft or
(0:41:02) Jonnie: Or other games like I guess I was expecting this one to be a little bit easier And there’s lots of there’s lots of options right so you could turn stuff off and I think I end up turning off like needing to…
(0:41:12) Jonnie: needing to eat food but turning off like the monsters kind of felt like a step too far but I kind of wish I had done that [laughs]
(0:41:22) Jonnie: and it is just one of these sort of survival crafting games at its core there’s not too much that it’s doing that’s different I guess other than the building and I think the building is quite good because it uses the…
(0:41:42) Jonnie: …they go block mechanic and you can…
(0:41:44) Jonnie: …but it starts you off not with having to build everything brick by brick.
(0:41:48) Jonnie: You start with some templates.
(0:41:50) Jonnie: And so you can build like an actual shed a lot easier than just…
(0:41:54) Jonnie: …having to collect the bricks and building your first house in Minecraft.
(0:41:58) Jonnie: Which typically takes…
(0:42:00) Jonnie: …not that it’s hard to do, but it takes a little bit longer maybe to work out and put everything.
(0:42:04) Al: Yeah, I think so. A LEGO Minecraft clone, if you will, makes perfect sense, right?
(0:42:12) Al: I think we can probably agree on that.
(0:42:15) Al: I used I played Minecraft so much when I was younger.
(0:42:21) Al: Like during my like, it’s I mean, it’s wild how how long Minecraft’s been going
(0:42:26) Al: for and the fact that it’s still going, I I remember picking it up when I was in
(0:42:31) Al: And I would literally play like.
(0:42:34) Al: Like through the night, every night, sitting up, playing this stupid game that I loved so much.
(0:42:42) Al: I don’t play anymore because obviously I, you know, I’m an adult.
(0:42:45) Al: I have a life now.
(0:42:47) Al: I can’t just spend all night doing it, but I, I get why they’re doing that.
(0:42:55) Al: I get why Lego are doing this.
(0:42:58) Al: We can ignore the Fortnite aspect of it because they certainly ignored the Fortnite aspect of it.
(0:43:05) Al: I didn’t have a huge amount of fun playing this game.
(0:43:07) Al: And I think I don’t know whether that’s because the, the game doesn’t jive with me in some way that Minecraft did or whether, and this is the problem with this kind of game, whether I just don’t have the time and the life for it anymore.
(0:43:21) Al: Would I have enjoyed this game more if it had come out when I was a new name rather
(0:43:26) Jonnie: I’m going to take a guess and say, I don’t think so.
(0:43:30) Jonnie: For me, equally, I was never a big Minecraft person.
(0:43:34) Jonnie: But when I have tried Minecraft in the past, I get it.
(0:43:39) Jonnie: I see the magic that is in Minecraft.
(0:43:43) Jonnie: The first time, you punch a bit of the ground,
(0:43:45) Jonnie: and it appears in your inventory.
(0:43:47) Jonnie: And then you’re like, what?
(0:43:48) Jonnie: And you can kind of just put it down anywhere.
(0:43:51) Jonnie: There’s some magic in that.
(0:43:53) Jonnie: And that’s what this game misses.
(0:43:56) Jonnie: From what I’ve seen, you can build some really impressive stuff, but in the time that I spent with the game, that felt so unachievable and so far away.
(0:44:08) Jonnie: Whereas in Minecraft, it’s just you get started, right? And that’s what’s missing.
(0:44:08) Al: Yeah. That’s a good point, because the world in Minecraft is made of the things that you build with, whereas this is the world isn’t all, it’s not the same thing, right? Like if you actually had, if it was like Lego, where everything was like visibly made of Lego,
(0:44:30) Al: because obviously it is made of Lego, right? But it’s not visibly made of Lego, if that makes sense right like you can’t go or there’s that block like you look at
(0:44:38) Al: in Minecraft you go oh I can see that’s a wood block that’s a wood block that’s a wood block that’s a leaves block that’s a leaves block that’s leaves block and then you can look at everything else everything else in the game other than like animals which you can’t make anyway because that wouldn’t make any sense everything else is visibly made of blocks and so you can visibly see what it is and recreate it or build your own things and it’s that visual aspect of things I think that that it’s missing, right? Like you can build things, but it turns into.
(0:45:08) Al: It’s not the exact same as if you were literally making this in real life, right?
(0:45:14) Jonnie: I think that is exactly it, right? You are going and you are collecting wood or chopping trees and then you’re using the wood to make Lego blocks, to make wooden Lego blocks.
(0:45:14) Al: You could make Minecraft blocks in real life and you could build them exactly like you do in the game.
(0:45:32) Jonnie: You’re not chopping down, you know, you’re not taking the wooden block that is used to make the Lego tree and repurposing it.
(0:45:42) Jonnie: And I think that’s the.
(0:45:44) Jonnie: Disconnect that that stops me from from this game being what I think I wanted it to be based on
(0:45:50) Jonnie: My initial perception and I get why they’ve done what they’ve done, right?
(0:45:53) Jonnie: It’s I think I think the game that we’re talking about is substantially more difficult to make
(0:45:59) Al: Yes.
(0:46:00) Jonnie: But it is also undeniably way more Lego
(0:46:03) Al: Yeah, I guess that’s like it’s interesting that we’re still at the point where Minecraft has made a better LEGO game than LEGO has.
(0:46:12) Jonnie: Yep.
(0:46:13) Al: You know, some random guy in Sweden made a better LEGO game than the corporation that owns LEGO.
(0:46:19) Al: OK, so aesthetics wise, although like that fundamental point aside, it still feels like it looks
(0:46:29) Al: and feels like even if they’re like building partisan.
(0:46:32) Al: I like there’s something still fundamentally fun about being a LEGO minifig, even if you don’t enjoy playing the game.
(0:46:40) Al: I’ve always thought about LEGO games.
(0:46:42) Al: I’ve never really liked any LEGO game.
(0:46:44) Al: I’ve tried so many of them and I’ve never really liked how they work and how they control.
(0:46:51) Al: But there is still something fundamentally fun about being a LEGO minifig.
(0:46:54) Jonnie: Yeah, I love being a LEGO minifigure. I think there’s two LEGO games that I really enjoyed.
(0:47:00) Jonnie: The first one was the very first LEGO Star Wars. That game was just incredible.
(0:47:08) Jonnie: And that sort of spawned the whole LEGO X genre, and I don’t think anything else really captured the magic in the way that first game did. And the second, it was like an old PC game from like ‘96,
(0:47:20) Jonnie: and I don’t remember what the subtitle is and I just
(0:47:24) Jonnie: have memories of being like six or seven and playing this kind of terrible now Lego adjacent
(0:47:33) Jonnie: game where you sort of drive around a city that’s very empty and at some point you turn your car into a building or something like that and it’s all just very cutscene driven and nothing really like that lego-y happens but for a six or seven year old who loves Lego at the time that was incredible uh I don’t know um
(0:47:50) Al: Lego Creator. Because that looks like, like, because based on your description of the mechanics,
(0:47:54) Jonnie: potentially.
(0:48:01) Al: I think that’s the only one from the 90s I can see that fits it. There’s like a race.
(0:48:04) Jonnie: Let’s say it was that then ah yes, this is it. Yeah, Lego creator. This was the game
(0:48:07) Al: Okay. I can see how you’d like that. Yeah, I never tried any of them when I was a kid.
(0:48:16) Al: So I’ve come to them later in life and just never really.
(0:48:20) Al: Clicked with them.
(0:48:23) Jonnie: So shall we talk about the farming a little bit, or I guess the…
(0:48:27) Jonnie: So I guess the one thing that this does quite different to Minecraft is there’s this village aspect.
(0:48:36) Jonnie: Did you get into the village aspect that much?
(0:48:38) Al: Not a huge amount because, well, I started playing Pokémon again. It’s always Pokémon, isn’t it?
(0:48:47) Al: But I think that in terms of the farming, I think that clearly farming was part of the initial thought process of this game, whereas with Minecraft it was very much, “Oh, we could add this aspect into the game.” And although we did cover Minecraft as a farming game on the podcast before we were officially cottagecore.
(0:49:08) Al: This is very much not a farming game. There’s like four crops or something, and that’s about it. And they’re very basic.
(0:49:18) Al: This one feels much more like farming was thought of as a core thing they wanted to add to the game, rather than an additional thing later.
(0:49:27) Jonnie: Yeah, it’s definitely more planned out, and I guess, you know, taking a step back and looking slightly wider from a cottage core aspect, this has much stronger cottage core vibes than games like Minecraft do because you are fundamentally building a village and you can attract villages to your village, and they help out with tasks around the village, which is quite a cool little concept.
(0:49:51) Jonnie: But the farming itself, I think is, like you say, it’s definitely more…
(0:49:58) Jonnie: In particular, I think that the mechanic I like the most is just in order to attract animals to, you know, to be able to farm them for resources as you have to find the food they like and just literally lay out a trail, you know, like you’re a witch trying to attract children into your house.
(0:50:18) Jonnie: You just literally lay out a trail and lure them into the pen and then build a gate or shut the gate behind them, and that’s how you acquire animals.
(0:50:27) Jonnie: your farm which I quite
(0:50:29) Al: Yeah. Yeah, that does sound fun. I mean, I don’t have a huge amount to add to this.
(0:50:33) Al: Like, I literally didn’t do any part of that.
(0:50:36) Al: I kind of, you know, the first bit, you pop in, you’re like, “Oh, what happened?
(0:50:40) Al: Where am I?” And then you like build a fire and you explore the world a little bit.
(0:50:45) Al: That was it. That was what I did.
(0:50:48) Jonnie: Well, so I guess the crop growing, because there is crop growing as well, you get seeds,
(0:50:56) Jonnie: you put seeds in ground, you don’t have to water them, they just grow.
(0:51:00) Jonnie: But you can, you know, so you can assign farmers, villagers to harvest crops and do things like that.
(0:51:08) Jonnie: So there is automation in this game, which I guess is quite nice, and that’s the role the villagers play.
(0:51:14) Jonnie: But it’s not, I guess, super-deepened in that aspect, and realistically everything in this
(0:51:18) Jonnie: game seems to be geared towards, you know, get materials, to get more materials, to build cool LEGO creations, which I think is a gameplay loop that I presume if you are coming to a game like this that you are looking for. And I think the cool thing that it does from a sort of cottage core kind of vibe is the ability to make a town is a cool thing to do because so many of the games we play in this genre, I have predetermined towns, you know.
(0:51:48) Jonnie: Like Stardew Valley or Coral Island, or they have towns that are sort of semi predetermined,
(0:51:54) Jonnie: like Animal Crossing, where yes you could terraformers and you know you invite villages or whatever.
(0:52:00) Jonnie: But actually you know the core buildings that you have there, you know your shops or whatever,
(0:52:06) Jonnie: are pretty much the same island to island, so the variation is more decorative than anything else.
(0:52:13) Jonnie: So to have something where I guess you can build the village that you want and…
(0:52:18) Jonnie: have villages participate in it in a way that you want is… it’s a novel concept and while it didn’t necessarily land for me in this game, it’s something I would be keen to see in other games.
(0:52:30) Jonnie: You know maybe somewhere where rather than moving to a town that already exists, if you move to somewhere that doesn’t have a town and you’re trying to build it up and attract more people to
(0:52:42) Jonnie: live there and maybe be a little bit directional about you’re going to go be the you know general storekeeper or you’re going to be the doctor.
(0:52:48) Jonnie: Or whatever it might be, is a concept that’s kind of appealing to me, having tried.
(0:52:56) Al: Yeah, yeah, that does sound interesting because, yeah, I think you’re right.
(0:52:59) Al: The only ones that we have that have any kind of sandbox element.
(0:53:03) Al: It’s where how do you lay these out here?
(0:53:06) Al: Here are your building blocks.
(0:53:08) Al: How do you lay them out?
(0:53:09) Al: Which is which is not the same thing as create a town, right?
(0:53:14) Al: Because you got, you know, we had, oh, what was it called?
(0:53:18) Al: Oh, goodness, I’ve forgotten the name.
(0:53:21) Al: There was a really good, really nice
(0:53:23) Al: 2d8bitcatastale1, little woods.
(0:53:26) Al: Is that what it’s called, little wood?
(0:53:28) Jonnie: Oh yes, a lot of words.
(0:53:29) Al: That one was another one which was quite sandbox-y, but it was very much like,
(0:53:33) Al: “Yeah, here’s a new villager.
(0:53:36) Al: Where did they go?”
(0:53:37) Al: And it was always the same villager sort of thing.
(0:53:39) Al: So you could, I mean, you could make drastically different looking towns,
(0:53:43) Al: but again, it was just 10 things that you had to put in the place.
(0:53:48) Al: And then you can build around that how you want.
(0:53:50) Jonnie: Yeah, and I guess I guess Lego doesn’t you know, I didn’t really attract too much in the way of villages I don’t think they have you know distinct personalities or anything like that
(0:54:02) Al: That’s probably our difficult balancing act to make, right? We’re going to dislike one aspect of it.
(0:54:08) Al: Either it’s going to be too samey, or the people are not going to have any personality, right?
(0:54:14) Al: Unless you’re going to design 100 people with unique personalities, and you will get 10 of them,
(0:54:22) Al: which is a ridiculous amount of work. Unless you do that, you’re not going to end up with both of those things.
(0:54:28) Jonnie: Yeah, I guess it makes me, I’ll say, curious for a generative AI application of coming up with dialogue and interesting characters, because we are in the realm where it is theoretically possible if someone was to do that today.
(0:54:45) Jonnie: I imagine it would be horrendously bad in a way that I kind of would like to try.
(0:54:48) Al: Hey, we love a car crash.
(0:54:51) Jonnie: And maybe slightly concerning.
(0:54:53) Jonnie: Yeah.
(0:54:54) Jonnie: You know, I guess that’s the sort of thing that I see as being possible.
(0:54:58) Jonnie: Now, when you start to play games like these, I’m like, “Oh, I wonder how hard it is for generic dialogue to be somewhat automatically generated.”
(0:55:08) Al: And someone’s going to do it with AI and we’re going to hate that for different reasons.
(0:55:11) Jonnie: Yep.
(0:55:12) Jonnie: And I wanna…
(0:55:14) Jonnie: Yep.
(0:55:15) Jonnie: Ah.
(0:55:19) Al: We’ve now created a situation where we have three different car crashes that we could look from and which one will somebody decide to do next.
(0:55:28) Al: I look forward to the one that does AI, but everything still feels samey somehow, because model that they built was a very small model.
(0:55:38) Jonnie: Right? (laughs)
(0:55:38) Al: They made a model of, oh, because they didn’t want to have any copyright issues, of course.
(0:55:43) Al: So they just wrote a hundred like dialogue lines themselves and they fed that into an AI.
(0:55:49) Al: And funnily enough, everything out of that felt the same.
(0:55:54) Al: Because that person didn’t understand how large language models work.
(0:56:00) Jonnie: in particular the first word being large.
(0:56:02) Al: Well, yeah, that too.
(0:56:08) Jonnie: I guess I don’t really have that much more to say on on Leo Fortnite like I was kind of keen to keen to cover yeah I was just keen to cover it because I think it’s something
(0:56:12) Al: That’s fine. That’s fine. I want to go to bed.
(0:56:20) Jonnie: that sort of feels cottagecore adjacent you know I think it’s again probably If you were looking at it and you were a little bit curious,
(0:56:30) Jonnie: I would probably know whether or not you like this game before you play it.
(0:56:34) Jonnie: I think, you know, probably multiplayer would help improve.
(0:56:38) Jonnie: You know, playing it with people would improve it just like Minecraft, just like one of those games.
(0:56:46) Jonnie: But equally, I kind of feel like my recommendation to most people that look at this and go,
(0:56:50) Jonnie: “Oh, I might try it with me. Just go back into Minecraft and play that with your friends.”
(0:56:54) Jonnie: Because I just…
(0:56:56) Jonnie: I think everything just feels easier, right?
(0:57:00) Jonnie: I was tempted by a lot of you and I being old and tired and time poor.
(0:57:02) Al: Probably. Yeah.
(0:57:04) Jonnie: We were like, “Just make it easy.”
(0:57:06) Jonnie: Because this one didn’t… it just didn’t feel easy enough.
(0:57:10) Jonnie: It could also be that I’ve never played a game before in my life.
(0:57:12) Jonnie: So I was learning the controls and everything for the first time.
(0:57:14) Al: I do feel like there is one person who would really like this game, and that’s the person that likes Minecraft, but is very obsessed with LEGO.
(0:57:25) Al: Like to our ridiculous point.
(0:57:29) Al: Like obviously, you know, we both like LEGO.
(0:57:32) Al: We have a lot of LEGO stuff.
(0:57:33) Al: We probably spend too much money on LEGO, but not to the point that LEGO would overtake anything else.
(0:57:39) Al: Right?
(0:57:40) Al: There’s a kind of person who loves LEGO so much they play all the LEGO games, no matter
(0:57:44) Al: who they are, because they just love LEGO.
(0:57:46) Al: It’s like me with Pokémon, right?
(0:57:48) Al: Like I will do everything Pokémon, because I love Pokémon.
(0:57:51) Al: I love everything about it.
(0:57:53) Al: And if Pokémon did a Minecraft clone, of course I’m going to play it and love it.
(0:57:58) Al: That kind of person with LEGO would love this game.
(0:58:01) Jonnie: Yeah, and look, I’m super excited to get into LEGO Fortnite YouTube and see the cool things that people are building in this game.
(0:58:08) Al: Yeah. That is the best way to play these games sometimes. It was like, I had so much fun playing Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. I really did. And I put like 150 hours into that. I had so much fun doing it, but I also had just as much fun watching people do ridiculous
(0:58:09) Jonnie: I just don’t have the time or the energy to build them.
(0:58:31) Jonnie: Yeah, it’s just, yeah, I think that was a great comparison, right, where it’s just like the creative things that people can come up with to build was so much fun to watch.
(0:58:42) Jonnie: The thought of going through the process of working out how to build all of that stuff is overwhelming.
(0:58:49) Jonnie: So I’m really pleased that there’s people out there that are willing to do that and to put it on there.
(0:58:53) Jonnie: And I think that’s probably the best way to engage with.
(0:58:56) Al: Awesome. Well, thank you for coming and doing this.
(0:59:00) Al: So we’ve done it so we don’t have to do it again.
(0:59:04) Jonnie: Until one of us gets really sucked in to Lego Fortnite over the Christmas break and it’s like, “Hell, maybe we’ll do a second harvest.”
(0:59:10) Al: It’s not, no, it’s not going to happen. There’s too many other things to play.
(0:59:16) Jonnie: There’s way too many other things.
(0:59:18) Al: Thank you, Johnny, for joining us. Before I fall asleep, tell me what to care about.
(0:59:24) Jonnie: The thing that people should care about this year like look it’s coming into Christmas
(0:59:29) Jonnie: Times are tough for everyone. Just care about the people around you, you know, like that’s I think that’s my message is
(0:59:37) Jonnie: Particularly in the age of the Internet like care about the people that you talk to
(0:59:41) Jonnie: You know, they don’t have that when I say the people around you it doesn’t have to be the people physically around you
(0:59:45) Jonnie: Ellen I may be about as far away from each other as we could possibly be
(0:59:50) Al: Yeah, pretty much. You got slightly closer when you moved.
(0:59:51) Jonnie: It’s so nice that you know, you know
(0:59:55) Jonnie: I did, I did, actually, yes, I am marginally closer.
(0:59:57) Jonnie: [LAUGH] Yeah, I don’t know, just.
(0:59:59) Al: Because the literal was anti-point of me is like just off the coast of New Zealand.
(1:00:08) Jonnie: But if you feel like you have, you know, a little bit extra to give, THSPod or patreon.com/THSPod,
(1:00:17) Jonnie: you know, give a little bit to this great endeavor that Al does.
(1:00:20) Jonnie: And you can join us in the Slack, you can ask questions, you can talk about all of the Cottagecore games that you’re playing over the Christmas break.
(1:00:28) Jonnie: We’d love to hear about them.
(1:00:30) Jonnie: I guess those are my two key messages.
(1:00:34) Al: Cool. Thank you very much. Next week we have our Game of the Year episode.
(1:00:38) Al: As I mentioned, there’s no news in that one because we’ve recorded it already.
(1:00:42) Al: Come listen to what we’ve decided is the podcast’s Game of the Year.
(1:00:48) Al: I’m sure many people will be annoyed by it.
(1:00:51) Al: We’ll see what happens.
(1:00:53) Jonnie: I can’t wait to be annoyed by it.
(1:00:56) Al: Will you be annoyed by it?
(1:00:57) Al: Probably. I think you will be annoyed by it.
(1:01:00) Jonnie: Will I be annoyed by it, Al? I get annoyed by everything. I’ll find a way.
(1:01:04) Al: Yeah, so come to that. We’ve got the podcast on Tumblr and on Twitter @THSPod. Come follow if you want to get updates on the podcast. You can follow me on mastodon.scot and on Twitter at thescotbot. You can find links to everything to do with the podcast and everything
(1:01:34) Al: both the show notes and on our website harvestseason.club, where you can also find the link to the Patreon that Jonny suggested as well. We’ll have an extra episode on there soon about the–after the game of the year episode, we’ll have the non-farming game of the year episode, which we don’t crown a winner because it’s just about what we liked. It’s not the same thing.
(1:01:59) Al: We had a good chat over those two episodes we recorded like.
(1:02:04) Al: What was it, three and a half hours of content over those two episodes.
(1:02:08) Al: So good luck.
(1:02:11) Jonnie: Look, it’s a good time of the year, it’s a time to be able to have people around their family, but they get maybe a little bit tired of their family, so three and a half hours, yeah.
(1:02:16) Al: Yeah, come listen to us instead.
(1:02:21) Al: Cool.
(1:02:21) Al: Great.
(1:02:22) Al: Um, I have no idea if I’ve said everything or not, but it is literally just turned into Monday, so I am going to bed.
(1:02:29) Al: Thank you, Johnny, again, for joining me.
(1:02:31) Jonnie: Thanks, Al.
(1:02:32) Al: Thank you listeners for listening.
(1:02:34) Al: And until next time, have a good harvest.
(1:02:36) Jonnie: Have a good harvest.
(1:02:37) Theme Tune: The harvest season is created by Al McKinlay, with support from our patrons, including our pro farmers, Kevin, Stuart and Alisa.
(1:02:52) Theme Tune: Our art is done by Micah the Brave, and our music is done by Nick Burgess.
(1:02:56) Theme Tune: Feel free to visit our website, harvestseason.club, both show notes and links to things we discussed in this episode.
(1:03:12) Al: I am somewhat alive, but yeah, I’m going to bed.
(1:03:14) Jonnie: You’re alive.
(1:03:20) Al: I’m glad I did this rather than having to get up earlier in the morning, especially as we’re doing that later in the week.

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