The Harvest Season

Timings

00:00:00: Theme Tune

00:00:30: Intro

00:02:30: What Have We Been Up To

00:12:54: Harvest Moon: Home Sweet Home

00:29:22: Game News

00:54:46: Natsu Mon

01:41:16: Outro

Links

Tales of the Shire Delay

Fantasy Life i on Steam

The Garden Path “Co-op” Update

Spirittea “Phantom Friends” Update

Sugardew Island Patch

Paleo Pines Roadmap

Echoes of the Plum Grove Roadmap

Contact

Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot

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

Transcript

(0:00:30) Al: Hello, farmers, and welcome to another episode of the harvest season. My name is Al,

(0:00:36) Micah: My name is Micah.

(0:00:37) Al: and we are here today to talk about cartridge core games.

(0:00:41) Micah: Yippee.

(0:00:45) Al: Welcome back, Micah. It’s actually not been that long. It’s only been about two months.

(0:00:47) Micah: Thanks. No, it really hasn’t.

(0:00:50) Micah: Yeah, which is wild because it feels like it’s been.

(0:00:54) Micah: A lot like the last two months has felt like an entire year, so.

(0:00:58) Al: Yeah, the last month specifically.

(0:01:00) Al: Uh, but we don’t need to talk about that.

(0:01:02) Micah: Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, yeah, of course.

(0:01:06) Micah: I it’s funny because I was like, why has it felt so in that moment just now?

(0:01:10) Micah: I was like, why does it feel like it’s been so long?

(0:01:12) Micah: And then it clicked. So yeah, we don’t need to discuss.

(0:01:14) Al: Mm, I wonder, uh, sometimes, uh, yes.

(0:01:21) Al: Uh, and we still, we still don’t have any news on the story of seasons for this year,

(0:01:27) Al: which I’m still expecting something.

(0:01:30) Al: It’s been a very long time, but, uh, who knows.

(0:01:30) Micah: Yeah. I’m too, I hear you. I’m expecting to. Yep, it’s bound to happen. It’s only a matter of time.

(0:01:35) Al: I’m just waiting for that announcement and then we’ll be like, right.

(0:01:37) Al: This is when we’re scheduling it in.

(0:01:42) Al: Well, yeah, we have Micah here this episode because we are

(0:01:46) Al: finally going to talk about Natsumon 20th century summer kid.

(0:01:50) Micah: - Yay.

(0:01:50) Al: We have pride a few times to actually record, uh, and things keep changing,

(0:01:53) Micah: We did.

(0:01:55) Al: but we finally got there.

(0:01:56) Al: They didn’t shadow drop a story of seasons and we have to

(0:01:59) Al: record about that instead.

(0:02:00) Al: I’ve only had one case where I’ve noticed some news drop while I’ve been recording,

(0:02:01) Micah: Could you imagine that it was,

(0:02:04) Micah: now was when we got the story of season news?

(0:02:15) Al: mainly because I’m not tend to be looking at the places where news comes in to see these things,

(0:02:20) Micah: - Sure.

(0:02:21) Al: but yeah, it’s never know one of these days. So we’re going to talk about that. We’ve obviously

(0:02:28) Al: got the regular news.

(0:02:31) Al: But first of all, maker, what have you been up to?

(0:02:34) Micah: Oh, just busy.

(0:02:37) Micah: Just got a lot going on.

(0:02:39) Micah: I have been as far as games, though, I’ve been playing some

(0:02:45) Micah: monster hunter wilds beta in preparation for that

(0:02:50) Micah: at the point that we’re recording.

(0:02:50) Al: and still not out yet.

(0:02:52) Micah: It is going to be out next week. It’s about a week.

(0:02:57) Micah: So I’m excited for that.

(0:03:00) Micah: I’m also, you know, at that point in my life

(0:03:04) Micah: a little bit anxious about a release for a game that I’m very excited about,

(0:03:08) Micah: because then that means that I have to figure out time to play it

(0:03:15) Micah: and also worry about how hyper fixated I’m going to become with it

(0:03:20) Micah: and what that’s going to do to all of the other responsibilities in my life.

(0:03:24) Micah: But I’m very excited for it.

(0:03:28) Micah: I’ve also been playing Pokemon, I’ve been doing more shiny hunting.

(0:03:32) Al: Are you still on your gen? Is it gen 2s? That’s what you were doing, I think, last time.

(0:03:34) Micah: I was doing I was doing Gen three last time I was talking about it. Yeah.

(0:03:40) Micah: I am doing that.

(0:03:42) Micah: So I have some friends in a community that do like full odds shiny hunting,

(0:03:48) Micah: which. Which adds an extra level of challenge.

(0:03:54) Micah: And I almost kind of find it like a little bit more relaxing

(0:03:56) Al: Sadness.

(0:04:00) Micah: relaxing because it’s like it’s it you

(0:04:01) Al: Interesting.

(0:04:04) Micah: you settle in for it you know like it’s something that you’re doing while

(0:04:08) Micah: you’re doing other stuff or while you’re like talking to people or while you’re

(0:04:10) Micah: watching something because you know that it’s gonna take a long time so it’s just

(0:04:14) Micah: like you kind of settle in and do your do your encounters do your resets do

(0:04:19) Micah: whatever it is and don’t don’t really think about it until you know three

(0:04:25) Micah: months later when you finally get the shine

(0:04:26) Al: I just find that I get bored when I do it. I tried Shaiman in BDSP and I did… I can’t

(0:04:32) Micah: Mm-hmm

(0:04:34) Micah: Yeah, yeah Yeah, that tends to be what happens and that’s a very normal and I respect you for that

(0:04:35) Al: even remember what I got to like 2000 or something. I just got bored of doing it every day and so I

(0:04:41) Al: just stopped.

(0:04:49) Al: I don’t think anybody has ever called me normal, but thank you.

(0:04:55) Micah: But I have a I have some friends that do they they do these you know challenges throughout the year

(0:05:01) Micah: They’ll have like a like this last week was

(0:05:04) Micah: Shiny alpha week and it was everybody hunts in for alpha Pokemon and legends Arceus or

(0:05:13) Micah: February was unknown challenge month. So

(0:05:17) Micah: It was you know

(0:05:19) Micah: You shiny hunt for an unknown and then whatever letter unknown you get then you have to shiny hunt something that starts with that letter

(0:05:26) Micah: So like if I get it an unknown M then I can go hunt like Magnemite or something, you know

(0:05:32) Micah: So yeah, there’s just

(0:05:34) Micah: like fun little challenges and things to do when I’ve got, you know, if I’m like rendering

(0:05:40) Micah: something or I’m watching something or in a meeting and kind of listening, but also just like

(0:05:48) Micah: need something, you know, it’s just a little background thing I can do every once in a while.

(0:05:54) Al: Fair enough.

(0:05:55) Micah: I have downloaded a Rude factory pixel cross and I have not played it yet. So I mean, it just came

(0:06:00) Al: Nice.

(0:06:02) Al: Well, I mean, it only came out yesterday, so that’s fair.

(0:06:04) Micah: out. Yeah. But I got to download it and I’m ready to try it. I’m excited about the potential new,

(0:06:12) Micah: you know, like the positive changes to it from the story of seasons version.

(0:06:20) Al: Yeah, I’m very intrigued. I’ve done a little bit of it. This is one of the games that I’ve

(0:06:25) Al: played today, maybe like half an hour or so. So I’ve got a few, you know, the standard

(0:06:32) Al: tutorial puzzles and a few of the ones that actually make you think. And so I’ve not

(0:06:37) Al: got to any of the extra stuff like the customisation that’s in this one. But I did read on Fogu

(0:06:45) Al: on there, posted about it, and it looks like it is just kind of.

(0:06:50) Al: background customisation. It doesn’t seem to actually affect anything, which is what

(0:06:54) Al: I expected, but a little bit more detailed and interesting than the story of Seasons

(0:06:55) Micah: Yeah, yeah.

(0:07:01) Al: 1. And I’m intrigued and excited to try one of the boss levels that they have. Have you

(0:07:06) Micah: Oh yeah, I’m interested in that. No, I haven’t. I haven’t seen anything about it. I actually didn’t know that there were any improvements to the story of season model of it until you had mentioned it when we were talking about it on the game of the year episode.

(0:07:08) Al: not seen the boss level stuff?

(0:07:16) Al: Mm hmm. Yeah.

(0:07:24) Micah: So I’m excited to try any of it because I haven’t seen any of it yet.

(0:07:28) Al: Yeah, so I guess the big things for you would be there’s colour puzzles and the boss ones

(0:07:35) Al: are timed and if you do something wrong, which, come on, who does something wrong? You’re

(0:07:44) Al: just doing it too fast. It takes time off, the timer. So the timed, they have to do it

(0:07:45) Micah: Okay, gotcha.

(0:07:52) Al: within a certain amount of time, because obviously, technically, they’re all timed, right? You

(0:07:55) Al: can see how long it is. And it’s always fun in the first few ones.

(0:07:56) Micah: Right. Yep.

(0:07:58) Al: to see like, Oh, can I get this one done in 10 seconds? Or can I

(0:08:03) Al: get this one done in five seconds? I think I have one in

(0:08:05) Al: eight or something like that. That’s the fastest one I have

(0:08:08) Al: this game. But yeah, making you do it within a certain amount of

(0:08:13) Al: time is an interesting different way of doing it. They do have

(0:08:16) Al: two play styles. So you can skip that part of it if you want to.

(0:08:21) Al: But yeah, it’s interesting. The boss stuff. Yeah.

(0:08:22) Micah: Skip the the oh the bus skip the boss stuff I see okay. Yeah, I really liked them

(0:08:32) Micah: Shoot I can’t remember the name of it. It was

(0:08:36) Micah: Picto quest that’s what it was

(0:08:39) Micah: and that was the

(0:08:41) Micah: Nonogram game on the switch that and probably on PC. I don’t know but I played it on the switch and it was

(0:08:47) Micah: very light RPG style of nonogram

(0:08:52) Micah: like it had a little bit, you know, it was just like

(0:08:54) Micah: You’re going across a map and then you challenge a goblin or whatever and then it’s just like a 10 by 10 puzzle or something

(0:09:02) Micah: And then you would get upgrades if you did certain things. So they had like some there were a couple that were like, oh, it’s a boss

(0:09:08) Micah: Thing, you know like a boss puzzle and I really loved that idea. It just was so

(0:09:15) Micah: Bare-bones, I think such a like early idea, you know, like fresh and early idea that

(0:09:22) Micah: There wasn’t a whole lot to it. So, um, I I kind of hope that there are maybe more

(0:09:30) Micah: Like use cases of that like that kind of, you know adding quests and stuff to it because that adds an extra level of

(0:09:38) Micah: Interest that I would I would really enjoy

(0:09:41) Al: Yeah, yeah, I’m not far enough into to see whether that is there or not. One thing I

(0:09:45) Al: did find interesting is that the puzzles are laid out like a map. So it’s not, it’s not

(0:09:50) Al: just like you play this one, then you play the next one. It’s like, these are the ones

(0:09:53) Al: you can do. And to unlock others, you have to to beat ones in specific positions, which

(0:09:58) Micah: Oh, interesting.

(0:09:59) Al: I thought was an interesting way of doing it. So it’s not the I think as you go further

(0:10:04) Al: out, the difficulty does increase, but it’s not just like, constant, I think I saw some

(0:10:08) Al: that were further away from the middle that were not hard.

(0:10:12) Al: They were slightly easier, that sort of thing.

(0:10:15) Al: So, yeah, interesting. See how that continues.

(0:10:15) Micah: sure. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I’m excited to try it. I’ve also been playing a Hello Kitty Island

(0:10:24) Micah: adventure. Of course. Yes. Yeah. I played some on the mobile. I played some on Apple

(0:10:26) Al: - Good, good, good.

(0:10:26) Al: Are you on the switch for you?

(0:10:30) Al: You twice, what are your thoughts?

(0:10:33) Al: All right, yeah.

(0:10:33) Micah: Arcade when it came out. Yeah. And yes. One hundred percent. And I’m glad that I waited

(0:10:35) Al: You did the same thing as me.

(0:10:36) Al: You went, “This is a fun game.

(0:10:38) Al: I want a controller.”

(0:10:45) Micah: much better experience on the switch, like with a controller. Becky has been absolutely

(0:10:52) Micah: enamored with it. It’s her primary game that she plays now. And we did some of the multiplayer

(0:11:00) Micah: together. So that was an interesting experience. It was fun just like, you know, wandering

(0:11:07) Micah: around together and like doing things. There wasn’t a whole. There’s not like a whole lot

(0:11:10) Micah: you can do multiplayer wise, but yeah, it’s it’s it’s great.

(0:11:15) Micah: It’s such a good. I don’t know. I really I really like it. I’ve been enjoying it. And then I played

(0:11:21) Micah: a little bit of vowed, but I have played a lot yet. I don’t know if you have touched it.

(0:11:26) Al: I’m aware of it because I listen to a lot of different gaming podcasts and videos and

(0:11:33) Al: stuff like that.

(0:11:34) Al: So I’m aware of it.

(0:11:35) Micah: Yeah. I like Obsidian, who’s the developer. They did Fallout New Vegas and they’ve done a lot of like

(0:11:35) Al: I don’t think it’s my thing, but I can see why people like it and it sounds interesting.

(0:11:47) Micah: older RPGs and stuff like that. I’m a big Elder Scrolls fan, so there’s some level of like

(0:11:56) Micah: hoping that it is in some way close to Elder Scrolls, given that it’s, you know,

(0:12:02) Micah: a team that has experience with Bethesda.

(0:12:05) Micah: And it’s fantasy and, you know, first person and all that.

(0:12:09) Micah: I really like it so far, but it’s it’s not open world.

(0:12:12) Micah: It’s very, you know, like it’s it’s sectioned off,

(0:12:16) Micah: which I think makes sense for the game.

(0:12:18) Micah: But it’s, you know, it’s on Game Pass.

(0:12:21) Micah: So you can’t really can’t really complain, you know,

(0:12:27) Micah: they’re paying for.

(0:12:27) Al: I mean, when is when has that ever stopped gamers before?

(0:12:30) Micah: Oh, 100 percent.

(0:12:34) Micah: But yeah, it’s.

(0:12:35) Micah: I can’t I can’t really see myself having like bought it if it wasn’t available on game pass when it when it launched, you know, so yeah, what about you other than pixel crust?

(0:12:42) Al: Yeah, that is fair.

(0:12:48) Al: Yeah, well, not a huge amount this this week. I think the big thing, though, which obviously I need to talk about to you, Micah, is Harvest Moon Homes, Sweet Home. I have hit credits in Harvest Moon Homes, Sweet Home.

(0:12:56) Micah: Oh, that’s big.

(0:13:03) Al: Yeah, it’s the

(0:13:04) Micah: Are you ready to do that all over again when it comes down on the switch or whatever?

(0:13:08) Al: I will not.

(0:13:12) Al: Let’s not even try and pretend that, unless there’s some way to transfer my save over,

(0:13:16) Micah: Oh, that’s big.

(0:13:18) Al: I’m not doing the early game again. I had a couple of thoughts that I thought might be

(0:13:23) Al: quite interesting. I presume you didn’t continue playing it after our episode. No.

(0:13:26) Micah: I have not played really much of anything from it.

(0:13:29) Al: So I think the things, a few things I found interesting having now completed the game,

(0:13:35) Al: although I’m in that annoying bit where I’m like, do I finish all these achievements or not? Because

(0:13:40) Al: I have all bar.

(0:13:42) Al: Let’s just let me just I’ve got it up here.

(0:13:44) Al: Let me just double check achievements.

(0:13:46) Micah: Now are these like in-game achievements or is it like Apple arcade achievements or whatever?

(0:13:51) Al: It’s it’s it’s it’s Apple Game Center.

(0:13:54) Micah: Yeah, oh yeah, sorry game center, yeah

(0:13:54) Al: It’s not arcade because it’s made for, but yeah, it’s game center.

(0:13:58) Al: So I have 48 of 68 achievements.

(0:14:03) Micah: Holy smokes

(0:14:04) Al: And I think about 10 of those ones I don’t have are just like shipping 50 of

(0:14:12) Al: one specific crop.

(0:14:14) Al: So I’m at the point where I’m like, I’ve basically got 10 left to do.

(0:14:19) Al: But they’re things like

(0:14:22) Al: completing the crops encyclopedia, completing the fish encyclopedia.

(0:14:26) Al: I have not once fished in this game.

(0:14:30) Al: So I’m like, I don’t know if I want to do those, but it feels like I’m so close.

(0:14:34) Al: But it also no.

(0:14:37) Al: So, yeah, let’s see.

(0:14:40) Al: That is my, here’s my, I was in.

(0:14:42) Al: Interesting thing. So I finished chapter 10. That is the final chapter and only 2%

(0:14:48) Al: of players have earned this achievement, according to Apple, 2% have completed.

(0:14:52) Micah: That’s incredible, you know, there’s something really interesting about this to me that

(0:14:59) Micah: What was the game before home sweet home? Was it one world?

(0:15:02) Al: No, one world was before that, the one before that, it was winds of anthos.

(0:15:03) Micah: No one world was the one before that. Oh

(0:15:09) Micah: Wins of Anthos, that’s right. And you know, it’s funny because I very distinctly remember you saying I am

(0:15:17) Micah: Returning this or trading it in or whatever, you know, like as soon as I get the opportunity to

(0:15:20) Al: Yeah. Yeah.

(0:15:22) Micah: And here we are you have hit credits on home sweet home, which is

(0:15:27) Al: Well, can I just point out, I think both of us hit credits in one world.

(0:15:31) Micah: Yes, we did, yeah

(0:15:32) Al: And because, I think, mainly because we were fascinated as to where it was going to end up,

(0:15:38) Al: I will say that’s not why I finished this game. It’s not because I was like, “Oh,

(0:15:42) Al: I really need to know what happens with this story.” The story is basically non-existent,

(0:15:46) Al: right? Like it’s basically just you’re, you’re, you’re making this.

(0:15:50) Al: This town more, more, that’s it. Like you’re, you’re making people happy and you’re, you’re

(0:15:54) Micah: More and more

(0:15:58) Al: doing things and that’s it. Um, what I found really interesting that, you know, the area

(0:16:03) Al: that was like left of your farm that looked like it was a gated off area that you could

(0:16:07) Al: access later on in the game. You never unlock that. That’s not, that’s not a thing. Is that

(0:16:09) Micah: Oh, yeah.

(0:16:15) Al: meant to come in an update or something? It’s even called, it called Alba Park.

(0:16:20) Micah: - You know, I don’t know.

(0:16:20) Al: And, and there’s a gate there. Why can I not go that way? I’ve completed.

(0:16:27) Micah: It’s gotta, it has to be, right?

(0:16:29) Micah: Well, let me ask you this.

(0:16:31) Micah: Have they updated it at all since?

(0:16:34) Al: Just the just the one update that came out like what a week after we recorded our last episode, which added the controller support and the well ads cloud save but the cloud says broken still.

(0:16:40) Micah: Okay, that was the only one.

(0:16:47) Micah: Okay, great.

(0:16:48) Al: That’s the only update that I’m aware of happening.

(0:16:51) Micah: ‘Cause I distinctly remember, too, that there was,

(0:16:58) Micah: it looked like there were going to be spaces

(0:17:01) Micah: or like placeholders for other languages, for text.

(0:17:05) Al: Oh, yeah

(0:17:07) Micah: And I remember thinking, oh, this is probably gonna come

(0:17:10) Micah: in an update, but if they never added that either,

(0:17:14) Micah: there must be a bunch of things that were just like,

(0:17:17) Micah: We’ll add this in an update at a later date.

(0:17:21) Micah: And maybe now it’s either they just are no longer touching it or

(0:17:27) Micah: it is uh they’re just saving all those updates for the console release maybe?

(0:17:32) Al: So this is where I break your brain yet again, Micah, and tell you that it has only been six

(0:17:37) Al: months since this game I came out. It was August.

(0:17:38) Micah: What oh

(0:17:42) Micah: Yeah, that’s right

(0:17:43) Micah: I remember this you did this to me on the game of the year episode two and I like

(0:17:48) Micah: That blows my mind that that it’s only been that long. It feels like this game was two years ago

(0:17:54) Al: So I don’t know, yeah, it doesn’t feel weird for there to be like, if we got an update

(0:17:57) Micah: And that’s not just because of the last month isn’t it

(0:18:08) Al: in a month, I wouldn’t be surprised that would be like, roughly about the time from the release

(0:18:12) Al: to the last update. I don’t know. I don’t know if I actually believe this is coming

(0:18:16) Al: to console. I feel like we would have heard something by now, right?

(0:18:17) Micah: Yeah

(0:18:22) Micah: Yeah, I think so too I I think I think if

(0:18:26) Micah: They announce a new

(0:18:29) Micah: Heart of harvest moon game that is not this I think it’s officially dead at that point, right?

(0:18:35) Al: Mm hmm. No, no.

(0:18:35) Micah: Like there’s no way that they’re going back to it. They are putting all of their resources into whatever

(0:18:42) Micah: The new thing is if that’s the case. So either we’re

(0:18:47) Micah: we’ll get something from them sometime soon, but it will either be this coming to consoles or

(0:18:55) Micah: Something new and then it’s just confirmation at that point that this is completely dead in the water

(0:19:01) Al: Yeah, I just I’m fascinated by this area that that doesn’t exist like I was fully expecting to unlock it at some point and it and it hasn’t.

(0:19:07) Micah: This is extremely interesting

(0:19:11) Al: The other couple of things I find interesting so you do so we’d complained about how it felt like you should be able to, you know, set a bunch of actions and get them to like water these 10 plants in a row.

(0:19:23) Al: It feels like that’s what the interface was built for, but that didn’t seem to be an example of that. You do unlock that later on, but you have to like progress this.

(0:19:31) Al: But the disadvantage of that over your standard up upgrading your watering can and now you can do like 20 at once instead you have to like individually press on all 20 and then it doesn’t manually the disadvantage of that is it still takes the same amount of time in game to water even when you have the highest level watering.

(0:19:32) Micah: Oh, okay.

(0:19:56) Micah: - Oh.

(0:19:57) Al: So, because it’s just doing them all individually.

(0:19:59) Micah: Oh. (laughs)

(0:20:01) Al: Right? You don’t have to manually let go that one and now that one, you can like swipe

(0:20:05) Al: over them and go like, want you to do all these or in the case of the controller, you

(0:20:09) Al: can just press and drag, but it takes so long. Whereas in other farming games, you upgrade

(0:20:15) Al: the watering can and you hold it down and then you’ve watered it all immediately rather

(0:20:19) Al: than having to wait for your character to like go and individually water all of these

(0:20:23) Al: 20 things. Such a weird decision.

(0:20:28) Al: The other one is the, I unlocked sprinklers.

(0:20:31) Al: And boy are the sprinklers weird in this game.

(0:20:35) Al: First of all, you only unlock the top level of sprinkler after you’ve finished the game,

(0:20:41) Al: which is the only one worth doing.

(0:20:43) Al: Because your first level of sprinkler is just your four spots, top, bottom, left, right.

(0:20:49) Micah: Yeah.

(0:20:49) Al: Never do them. They are never worth it.

(0:20:52) Micah: Oh.

(0:20:52) Al: And your second level of sprinkler is three by three, so you get eight spaces.

(0:20:59) Al: Okay, but you’ll do

(0:21:01) Al: not unlock that until I think it’s chapter 7 of 10. And by that point, you probably don’t need it.

(0:21:07) Al: Like, you’ve probably got most of what you need. And then at the end of the game,

(0:21:08) Micah: - You just passed the point of, yeah.

(0:21:12) Al: you finally unlock the one that’s five by five. But the problem is, it doesn’t fit in the plots

(0:21:18) Al: properly. So the bottom plot is six by five. So you put it in there, and you’ve got one line of

(0:21:24) Al: five that doesn’t get watered by it. And you can’t and you can’t put the sprinklers outside of it.

(0:21:31) Al: You either have 24 fed by one sprinkler and then five manual, or 24 by one sprinkler and

(0:21:39) Al: four by another sprinkler. It’s like, I’m not going to do a whole other because those are expensive.

(0:21:45) Al: You have like, I think it’s 12 different gems, including diamonds, which you can only get in

(0:21:49) Al: the bottom level of mine. I’m not going to waste all of those gems for four watered spaces.

(0:21:56) Micah: Well, yeah

(0:21:57) Al: And then you’ve got the other ones are… I know.

(0:21:58) Micah: What a weird oversight

(0:22:01) Al: The other plots that you unlock are something by four, not by five.

(0:22:10) Al: So you’re just you’re wasting time. So I have one, which is eight by five.

(0:22:14) Al: And I’ve got two watering cans on that. Sorry, two sprinklers on that.

(0:22:19) Al: So they’re using up two spaces, which by the way, feels a lot more of space in this game

(0:22:23) Al: than it does in any other farming game, because you’ve got such restricted space to use.

(0:22:29) Al: I’m like, if it was late.

(0:22:31) Al: out differently, it would almost all be covered by one sprinkler.

(0:22:36) Al: It’s just such a weird decision. I don’t understand why they’ve made these decisions.

(0:22:37) Micah: Hey, yeah, that’s really strange

(0:22:41) Micah: And it it makes me wonder if it was like, I don’t know

(0:22:45) Micah: I can’t even really think of a scenario for why that would be the kid like maybe they

(0:22:50) Micah: Just missed it or like they thought that maybe it was like automated

(0:22:55) Micah: You know

(0:22:57) Micah: Calculations or something and it was just wrong for that. I don’t know

(0:23:01) Micah: It’s it just feels like it would be something that someone would catch and be like, oh

(0:23:05) Micah: We either have to like

(0:23:07) Micah: Change the size of this plot a little bit or change the, you know, the ratio of spaces that this sprinkler covers, I don’t know, it’s odd.

(0:23:17) Al: I think it would have been better to be like a sprinkler covers a row and then when you unlock

(0:23:27) Al: the higher ones they cover more rows. So it would mean that you could have like one that would cover

(0:23:33) Al: four rows and that would mean you could have one sprinkler for a section and you put it at the side

(0:23:38) Al: so it doesn’t use up a crop space because crop spaces are so limited here and it would feel just

(0:23:43) Al: much less frustrating in terms of the numbers. They’ve just taken

(0:23:47) Al: a sprinkler in a normal farming game and put it into this game that is not done in

(0:23:52) Al: a normal way because they’ve thought about it completely differently.

(0:23:54) Micah: - Yeah, that’s very odd.

(0:23:57) Al: The final thing I have to say is that I don’t know what we did we talk about the soil health

(0:24:03) Al: in our episode. I can’t remember if we did. I don’t think we did because I don’t think

(0:24:05) Micah: Hmm, I don’t remember I don’t think we did

(0:24:09) Al: I don’t think we’d either of us had come across that. So soil health degrades in the get in this

(0:24:15) Al: this game, which is

(0:24:16) Micah: Okay. I don’t know that I even witnessed that on my, in my own.

(0:24:17) Al: very much like a realism wins over fun part of this game.

(0:24:24) Al: Yeah, so it does happen.

(0:24:26) Al: You just probably aren’t noticing it because you don’t get told about it until

(0:24:30) Al: you unlock a better fertilizer maker later on.

(0:24:30) Micah: Oh, okay.

(0:24:34) Al: And then they’re like, oh, your soil health.

(0:24:37) Al: If you click on this fertilizer maker, you can see your soil health.

(0:24:40) Al: You’re like, oh, everything is sad.

(0:24:44) Al: And so you basically have to, after a–

(0:24:47) Al: after a harvest of things, you have to let it sit for a bunch of days.

(0:24:51) Al: And when I say a bunch of days, I mean, it feels like it’s like half a month.

(0:24:54) Al: You have to let it sit for to go back to its full soil health.

(0:24:58) Al: Or you can use some compost to speed it up,

(0:25:01) Al: but the compost is like really awkward to craft or cost 2,500 per compost.

(0:25:08) Al: It is so expensive.

(0:25:10) Al: And so you spend the time rotating which plots you’re actually using for crops

(0:25:16) Al: and not actually

(0:25:18) Al: do anything about it, and it’s not actually doing what you want to do, and this is very much like, I understand you’re going for realism here, because that is what happens in real life, you have to rotate your crops, you have to rotate your soil, blah blah blah blah blah, but I’m not doing this for realism, right, like, it makes…

(0:25:32) Micah: Yeah, if there’s I mean, I respect to the to some degree,

(0:25:41) Micah: the the idea of making the the mechanics feel like they work

(0:25:48) Micah: realistically the way that it would in the real world. But

(0:25:50) Micah: like, if nothing else in the game really feels like it is

(0:25:54) Micah: adhering very strictly to realism, then you know, I don’t

(0:25:59) Micah: know that that’s really, I’m not really.

(0:26:03) Micah: For realistic mechanics and I’m playing a harvest moon or like a story of seasons game, you know, like I don’t know.

(0:26:10) Al: It’s always a balance for these things, where that very much is on the “no, I don’t want this” part of

(0:26:12) Micah: Right.

(0:26:17) Al: the thing. Oh, there’s one thing I just remembered. Horses, right? Neither of us have gotten far enough

(0:26:23) Al: to buy a horse in the last episode. You can buy horses, you cannot ride the horses around the town.

(0:26:24) Micah: Oh. Okay. What is the point? What do you do with them? Okay. Okay. All right. Again, maybe

(0:26:34) Al: You can ride it around the paddock, but that’s it. Why would you do that? For fun, that’s it.

(0:26:40) Al: That’s literally the only purpose. Why would you bother doing that? I have no idea. No idea.

(0:26:46) Micah: something that was intended to be added and the future of it. Just never.

(0:26:50) Al: But why can you… I don’t understand how you can ride it in one area and not in another area.

(0:26:56) Al: It just has a wall, and you can’t go through it. Why?

(0:27:02) Micah: It’s fascinating. I I don’t know him. Maybe there’s just some like maybe they couldn’t

(0:27:10) Micah: get the pathing right or something and they just were like I will fix this later. I don’t know.

(0:27:15) Micah: There’s there’s a lot in that game that feels to me like we’ll fix it later.

(0:27:18) Al: Oh, that’s it, actually. So you know the press on the map and it will automatically go there.

(0:27:25) Micah: Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So that’s either okay.

(0:27:26) Al: I bet that doesn’t work with horses. That’ll be why you can’t do it.

(0:27:33) Micah: We’ll fix it later or we can’t figure it. We can’t figure it out. So we’re just

(0:27:38) Micah: not going to include it at all. One of the two.

(0:27:39) Al: Yeah. Bizarre. Bizarre decision. But there we are. It was good enough for me to finish apparently.

(0:27:50) Al: And I guess tune in next time to see whether I will continue trying to finish the achievements.

(0:27:57) Micah: I wish you the best of luck, Godspeed.

(0:28:02) Al: I’m definitely going to do the 50 of each crop one because that I’m nearly done with that.

(0:28:07) Al: I literally have everything growing for that. Like in a week in game, that woman will be done.

(0:28:14) Micah: Yeah. Well, I wish you the best of luck.

(0:28:16) Al: But I don’t.

(0:28:20) Micah: It currently I just was out of curiosity.

(0:28:22) Micah: I wanted to see on the Google Play Store.

(0:28:24) Micah: It currently has a three point two out of five, which is.

(0:28:27) Al: that feels fair yeah I would say that feels fair

(0:28:28) Micah: A thousand reviews.

(0:28:31) Micah: Yeah, I kind of feel like maybe that is accurate.

(0:28:35) Micah: Oh, it says it was updated on December 10th.

(0:28:38) Al: yeah that was that update it dropped like two days after we recorded that was the one with the

(0:28:40) Micah: Oh, was it?

(0:28:43) Micah: - Oh.

(0:28:44) Micah: - Got it, got it, got it. Okay. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, interesting. I guess we’ll see what happens.

(0:28:45) Al: cloud save and the controller support which is the only reason i’m playing the game because of

(0:28:51) Al: controller support I couldn’t keep playing it on the touch screen but the controller support is

(0:28:55) Al: It’s actually pretty good.

(0:28:57) Al: Well, there we go.

(0:29:01) Al: I rushed this week to make sure I’d finished so I could talk to you about it, because I

(0:29:05) Al: was like, I’m so close, I must finish before I talk to Micah.

(0:29:09) Al: So there we go.

(0:29:10) Micah: I’m impressed that you completed it and I’m proud of you and

(0:29:10) Al: Hit credits in that game.

(0:29:14) Al: Well, yeah, it’s better than, it’s better than Sugardew Valley, Sugardew Island, sorry.

(0:29:15) Micah: I hope that it was worth it.

(0:29:19) Micah: It wasn’t intended to sound as meat as it did.

(0:29:27) Al: Well, the problem is, it’s like five bits into the game news.

(0:29:28) Micah: Is that a, is that a segue? Is that a,

(0:29:31) Micah: I can’t tell if that was an intentional segue or not.

(0:29:37) Al: So let’s just go through the, let’s talk about some news.

(0:29:39) Micah: Okay. All right.

(0:29:42) Al: Tales of the Shire has been delayed again.

(0:29:45) Micah: Yeah.

(0:29:46) Al: Can I just say, please stop putting a date on your game, right?

(0:29:49) Micah: Yeah. At this point, at this point, just like wait until you are close enough

(0:29:49) Al: Just stop it.

(0:29:54) Micah: that you can say, Hey, it’s coming in a couple of weeks, you know?

(0:29:59) Micah: Cause that’s always like a kind of a fun surprise too.

(0:30:02) Micah: When something has a sudden release date like that, uh, I, yeah.

(0:30:08) Al: Yes, it is murder for organizing a podcast about games but yes, I will agree I can see why people would find that fun. Yeah.

(0:30:13) Micah: - True, yeah.

(0:30:16) Al: It’s now coming out on the 29th of July. So, well, maybe we’ll see. That’s what they’re currently saying, but we’re on our third release date so far so let’s see what happens.

(0:30:26) Micah: Yeah, I was looking at some of the, you know, against my better judgment, some of the discourse

(0:30:35) Micah: under this post, just to see what, how people felt about it. Because my initial reaction whenever

(0:30:40) Micah: there’s a delay like this is, okay, that’s, you know, if you need more time, take the time,

(0:30:46) Micah: work on it, perfect it, whatever. And that was, I feel like maybe a good 40 to 50% of the sentiment

(0:30:55) Micah: and the other.

(0:30:56) Micah: 50 to 60% was in the kind of camp of worry that because this is the second time that they’ve delayed it that if things maybe are not going great development wise but I feel like.

(0:31:11) Al: Yeah, I never understand that because it’s like, no, people are just being overly optimistic about

(0:31:17) Al: these things. As someone who works in, not in game development, but in software development,

(0:31:18) Micah: Mm-hmm

(0:31:21) Micah: Yeah, oh, yeah

(0:31:21) Al: that happens all the time, right? People will be like, oh, this is when it needs to happen.

(0:31:26) Al: And then other people will be like, it’s not going to happen by then, but it gets set as the date

(0:31:31) Al: anyway. And then the day comes around and it hasn’t happened. And it’s like, you can’t make

(0:31:35) Al: it happen, right? Like, there’s only a certain amount you can actually do. And adding more people

(0:31:40) Al: belong does not actually improve.

(0:31:41) Al: And sometimes it just takes more time.

(0:31:44) Al: Like I could, I find this, you know, with, with, with Pokemon every time, right?

(0:31:49) Al: Where people are like, Oh, they just need to add more people.

(0:31:52) Al: Adding more people does not speed up development times.

(0:31:54) Micah: - Mm-hmm.

(0:31:55) Al: Adding more people quite often slows things down.

(0:31:58) Al: It’s not worth it.

(0:31:59) Al: Right.

(0:32:00) Al: And sometimes you just need the time.

(0:32:02) Al: I just, you can clearly see this as a fight between marketing and development.

(0:32:07) Al: Um, I don’t think, I don’t think it’s a sign of like serious

(0:32:08) Micah: 100%. I don’t think so either. I think people’s gut reaction is to look at, you know, other games

(0:32:18) Micah: that have gone into development hell and have never made them their way out. And that’s the

(0:32:24) Micah: concern. And I, you know, I, it seemed, especially for the people that were kind of that had this

(0:32:31) Micah: sentiment or it’s coming from a place of like concern because they’re excited for the game,

(0:32:36) Micah: You know I’m like

(0:32:39) Micah: concern because they want it to be really good which is like better than you know just saying like well I don’t you know this game’s doomed or whatever you know I’m just like not really just being a doomer about it just to be a doomer but I do think from my personal experiences with stuff like this too I do think that if they were looking at something that does

(0:33:08) Micah: close to like a development hell they would probably not put a second release date on it it probably would be something along the lines of we need a little bit more time to work on it and we’ll update you in the future and then at that point we probably would hear maybe a couple things and then nothing ever again but because they are putting a release date on it it makes me think that you know maybe there’s if it hits a if we get another delay after this then yeah I think it’s time to be a little bit

(0:33:38) Micah: concerned about it you know it I think because they have a release date that if they missed a second release date or a third release date now if they miss it then there’s gonna be you know it’s there’s a lot more stake in that which like you know kind of contradicts what we’re saying about like just don’t put a release date on it but

(0:34:00) Al: I guess the problem is those are two different things. We’re talking about just in general,

(0:34:04) Al: don’t give a release date unless you actually know when it’s coming out. I guess it’s difficult

(0:34:10) Al: when you’ve given a release date and now you’re like, oh, we don’t know now that I get worries

(0:34:16) Al: people. And so I get why they kind of have to do that now because otherwise people are going to

(0:34:20) Al: start, as you say, assuming the worst. But I’ve said it so many times, I do not think people

(0:34:30) Al: put a release date on it until you are at most a month away. Give us a year, sure,

(0:34:37) Al: because when people go, oh, we need some more time, it’s going to be next year. People are

(0:34:41) Al: generally fine with that, especially if you’re near the end of the year, they expect that that’s

(0:34:44) Al: going to happen. And then when you’re like, oh, I’m pretty confident, then you can say, oh,

(0:34:50) Al: it will happen in the second half or the quarter three or whatever. But don’t give us a date until

(0:34:54) Micah: Yeah, yep, definitely.

(0:34:56) Al: you know it’s if you wouldn’t release it today don’t get

(0:35:00) Al: as a date because it’s not gonna happen and like there are so few companies that do that

(0:35:00) Micah: Right.

(0:35:06) Al: they give you a date and it comes out on that date and you know one of the big ones is pokemon

(0:35:12) Al: and it doesn’t always work out well for them right they give you a date six months out and

(0:35:14) Micah: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think Nintendo stuff in

(0:35:17) Al: they release on that date and then it’s not a great game i’m so excited to see what happens

(0:35:21) Micah: Yeah, yep

(0:35:23) Micah: Gosh

(0:35:25) Micah: You know Pokemon days next week. So I guess we’ll see what happens with

(0:35:31) Micah: with

(0:35:32) Micah: You know it when they’ve got a little bit more time to cook it. We’ll see what happens

(0:35:36) Al: Well, there’s a big assumption there that they actually have taken more time,

(0:35:40) Al: because we don’t actually know when the when development started on this game.

(0:35:40) Micah: Yeah, that’s true. You’re right.

(0:35:44) Micah: You know, and this, this applies to Tales of the Shire too, I think, but, but also for Pokemon.

(0:35:49) Micah: We’re also, something to take into account is that we’re in the midst of the, of a, um, generation

(0:35:58) Micah: jump where like, you know, maybe that’s not necessarily the case as much for Tales of the

(0:36:03) Micah: Shire, but I could see it being a possibility where they know that a large user base for cozy

(0:36:11) Micah: games like this is on the switch.

(0:36:14) Micah: Or on handheld, maybe like the Steam Deck or something like that.

(0:36:20) Micah: And if they’re taking time because they know a little bit more about like maybe, I don’t

(0:36:28) Micah: know, a release window for Switch 2 or they’re trying to, you know, co-develop a Switch and

(0:36:31) Al: Well, that’s an interesting point.

(0:36:37) Micah: Switch 2 version so that they can release it on both, you know, some of that stuff tends

(0:36:42) Micah: to throw a wrench in the

(0:36:44) Micah: things that is kind of like not expected.

(0:36:48) Al: For most games, I would say there’s no way that that is part of this delay, but I feel like

(0:36:57) Al: I could see them have it like I could see that if they are I could see they could already have

(0:37:02) Al: a switch to dev kit because we know that some developers do that has been leaked. There are

(0:37:04) Micah: - Mm-hmm, yep.

(0:37:06) Al: developers that have it. Indies almost certainly won’t have it like there might be maybe some a

(0:37:12) Al: couple of big indies like maybe silk song for example is maybe that team cherry that’s what

(0:37:18) Al: isn’t it maybe they have one I could maybe see for example concerned ape having one

(0:37:26) Al: I could see these developers having one and so maybe that’s part of it that is a big possibility

(0:37:34) Al: I would say for most people it wouldn’t be the case but I could I could see Nintendo

(0:37:38) Micah: Oh, yeah, 100 percent.

(0:37:39) Al: I could see Nintendo going yeah no the the people that are developing a cozy game

(0:37:44) Al: about Lord of the Rings, yeah, let’s make sure that they are ready for this.

(0:37:46) Micah: Yeah, it’s the token property and it’s the what a workshop like that’s there’s a lot this.

(0:37:48) Al: Yeah.

(0:37:56) Micah: They’re not, you know, small money. So, but, you know, and if it is that they’re taking time to, to be able to have that ready for in the event of, you know, switch to or whatever they’re working on that.

(0:38:12) Micah: get and that gives them the opportunity to make sure that it’s

(0:38:16) Micah: a steam deck verified and stuff like that, that really

(0:38:20) Micah: improves that experience for their core audience, I think. I

(0:38:25) Micah: mean, they, you know, there’s always going to be people who

(0:38:27) Micah: are playing on PC or PS5 or Xbox or whatever, but cozy games, I

(0:38:34) Micah: think it’s pretty safe to say the, the, you know, the core of

(0:38:40) Micah: the audience is, is playing either on the switch or handled

(0:38:44) Micah: to some degree so.

(0:38:46) Micah: Um, I could see that being a, again, we won’t know until it’s, till we see something

(0:38:55) Micah: come of it.

(0:38:56) Micah: Maybe there’s, uh, you know, things coincide, like we can kind of piece together, but yeah,

(0:39:03) Micah: I guess we’ll see.

(0:39:04) Micah: We’ll see what happens when July 29th rolls around.

(0:39:08) Al: Yeah, I mean you never know we might I would say we don’t necessarily have to wait till then because if it is our switch to thing

(0:39:08) Micah: I’m very excited for it though.

(0:39:15) Al: There will 100% be some games announced in April

(0:39:18) Micah: Oh, sure, yeah.

(0:39:20) Al: They’ll be like, you know

(0:39:22) Al: Stardew Valley is going to be a switch to version that does this or whatever and maybe this will be one of them

(0:39:29) Al: Who knows? I’m not saying this will definitely happen. You’ve not heard it here first. We’re not saying

(0:39:35) Al: The Tales of the Shire is going to be switched to…

(0:39:38) Al: but I could see it happening and I’m excited for A-1.

(0:39:44) Micah: - Yeah, me too.

(0:39:45) Micah: I’m also excited just for this game in general.

(0:39:47) Micah: I’m very excited for this game.

(0:39:50) Al: Next we have, okay, I think it’s just meant to be fantasy.

(0:39:55) Al: Is it Fantasy Life I?

(0:39:56) Al: Is that how you’re meant to say these games?

(0:39:58) Al: Because I know this is a series of games,

(0:40:00) Al: but I don’t know if it’s just Fantasy Life I.

(0:40:02) Micah: This is the first one that has I in the title. So I yeah, this is this is a new experience

(0:40:06) Al: Oh, is it really?

(0:40:08) Al: Amazing.

(0:40:09) Al: Okay, perfect.

(0:40:11) Al: No notes.

(0:40:12) Al: Fantasy Life I, the girl who steals time,

(0:40:15) Al: we have a release date for this.

(0:40:18) Al: So it’s coming on the 21st of.

(0:40:20) Al: May and also it’s now coming to Steam and PlayStation and Xbox.

(0:40:26) Al: So it was previously meant to just be on Switch and I believe it was a 3DS game.

(0:40:32) Al: The previous one.

(0:40:33) Micah: it was they also had a mobile game that did not do too great um you know they did the the uh

(0:40:36) Al: Oh, surprise, surprise.

(0:40:42) Micah: classic level five maneuver of just kind of abandoning it once it you know didn’t really

(0:40:49) Micah: take off the way they’d hoped it did so uh it is no longer functional as a as a mobile game so uh

(0:40:54) Al: Well, this is only this, if you ignore the mobile game, this is only the second game

(0:41:01) Micah: Yes. Yeah. There was a.

(0:41:04) Micah: Like a the way that it released in Japan was it was fantasy life and they did fantasy life link which added extra stuff to it. So it was like, you know, a definitive version of it and then we got the West got the like full release of it.

(0:41:20) Micah: So there’s some like kind of weird stuff with it, you know, but yeah, this is ultimately just the second one.

(0:41:28) Micah: One of the best games on the 3DS in my opinion.

(0:41:33) Micah: It’s a fantastic game.

(0:41:34) Al: And this, I did not realize that this was the Yokai and Professor Leighton people.

(0:41:40) Micah: It is.

(0:41:41) Al: So there you go.

(0:41:42) Micah: Yep. Level five big fan level five.

(0:41:42) Al: Now we know.

(0:41:44) Micah: I’m a little bit apprehensive about anything that they’re doing from this point on because they have been very deep in the generative A.I.

(0:41:55) Al: Ow.

(0:41:57) Micah: You know, they did like a they recently showed off their.

(0:42:03) Micah: I guess spiritual successor to Yokai Watch, which is something hotel. I can’t remember some haunted hotel property and pretty much the entire trailer was like generative A.I.

(0:42:14) Al: Is that holy hardware man?

(0:42:15) Micah: So I am. Yes, that’s it. That is it.

(0:42:19) Micah: So I’m hoping that because this was prior to their big like this game existed prior to their big like push into generative A.I. that like hopefully it doesn’t, you know.

(0:42:33) Micah: I don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll see. I have a very strong love hate relationship with level five at this point.

(0:42:38) Micah: So I’m very excited and also nervous about this because I love fantasy life.

(0:42:47) Micah: It’s such a good game on the 3DS, but hopefully it’s good.

(0:42:51) Al: Yeah, it looks interesting. I like the graphics and everything,

(0:42:57) Al: and I’m excited to try it out when it releases in May.

(0:43:00) Micah: It’s got cross play - which is

(0:43:03) Al: Yes, across everything. Multiplayer across play. Very cool.

(0:43:04) Micah: Always excited for cross play

(0:43:08) Micah: Monster hunter is doing that. I’m very hopeful that this is the future of

(0:43:15) Micah: Multiplayer in general that everybody’s gonna be doing cross play

(0:43:18) Al: Yes, I can understand when you’ve got a competitive game, you don’t want keyboard and mouse players

(0:43:26) Al: playing with controller players, but the problem with that argument is always, well, you can

(0:43:32) Al: be a controller player on a PC.

(0:43:36) Al: And so you can’t restrict that.

(0:43:39) Al: So why restrict the other things?

(0:43:41) Al: I do think if they do something like that, I like when they do options.

(0:43:46) Al: You can either be just with people on…

(0:43:48) Al: your system, or you can be with anyone.

(0:43:51) Al: And in this case, it doesn’t really matter because it’s just co-op, right?

(0:43:54) Al: It does not a competitive, you know, every millisecond counts type of game anyway.

(0:44:00) Micah: Yeah jock i’m actually shy about that I guess because it’s not a like normal thing these days

(0:44:01) Al: It also has two-player local co-op.

(0:44:11) Al: No, it’s cool.

(0:44:12) Micah: so that’s pretty neat

(0:44:14) Al: And next we have the garden path have released their co-op update.

(0:44:20) Al: So you can probably guess what that brings to the game.

(0:44:24) Micah: Would you say that it’s co-op?

(0:44:26) Al: Yes.

(0:44:29) Al: Interestingly, so if you actually look in the patch notes,

(0:44:32) Al: the first update is players can now hold hands in multiplayer

(0:44:36) Al: by selecting the emote in the emote selector.

(0:44:38) Al: like her. I love how they’ve put in the effort to allow you to hold

(0:44:41) Al: hands. There you go. I haven’t played this game. That’s all

(0:44:42) Micah: I love that.

(0:44:50) Micah: - Yeah, I haven’t either, so it looks interesting.

(0:44:56) Micah: I mean, I really like the art style and stuff.

(0:44:59) Micah: I just, yeah, it hasn’t been on my radar enough.

(0:45:02) Al: Well, a game that has been on our radar, but probably not as much as we originally thought it might, is Spirit Tea.

(0:45:10) Al: They have released their Phantom Friends update, which brings you can now have Spirits as Pets, which is a fun little addition.

(0:45:19) Al: I think if you’re enjoying that game, this will be a nice little addition to that.

(0:45:24) Micah: It looks very cute

(0:45:25) Al: Also, as always with the Spirit Tea update, there’s new Spirits and Quests as well.

(0:45:26) Micah: It’s a cat spirit

(0:45:31) Al: Bye.

(0:45:32) Al: Oh yes, Sugardew Island.

(0:45:35) Al: So I would.

(0:45:36) Micah: - We made it.

(0:45:37) Micah: - We got, we got there.

(0:45:39) Al: Goodness me, I wouldn’t normally bring up an update this small for a game,

(0:45:45) Al: especially a game like Sugardew Island, which I don’t think should exist.

(0:45:49) Al: But they have updated a few things that I complained about in my last episode

(0:45:55) Al: when I reviewed it, so I felt like I should bring those up because if those

(0:46:00) Al: specific things and not

(0:46:02) Al: everything else that I said about the game with the reasons that you’re not playing it,

(0:46:05) Al: then maybe you will now. So selling items in the shop no longer requires energy. Hurray. Fantastic.

(0:46:13) Al: Just what we want. And you can now craft energy bars so you don’t have to go and just buy them.

(0:46:19) Al: You can craft them, which is good because that was a weird decision not to allow you to eat

(0:46:24) Al: anything you grow. But as I say in my show notes here, it is still not.

(0:46:32) Al: A good game. So there we go.

(0:46:35) Micah: I- I’m so curious, I’m just so cu- oh there’s a demo so I guess I don’t need to be that curious.

(0:46:43) Al: Yes, the demo is out now. If you want to try it, feel free.

(0:46:43) Micah: I can just try it.

(0:46:47) Micah: I- I feel like I have to, it’s just so fascinating to me and how like anti-SugarDew Island you are makes me want to try it.

(0:46:56) Al: This is the thing, I don’t like being negative about games.

(0:47:02) Al: And I was talking in the Slack to some of the patrons and I was like, I don’t think

(0:47:06) Al: I’ve ever been this negative about the game that I’ve covered on the podcast.

(0:47:11) Al: And it’s like, every example that people brought up about a game I was negative about, it was,

(0:47:15) Al: I don’t like this, but it’s not for me.

(0:47:19) Al: Other people will.

(0:47:20) Al: I understand it.

(0:47:21) Al: It’s like, I did not like my time at Porsche, but that was because I really didn’t like

(0:47:24) Al: how the crafting worked.

(0:47:26) Al: If we’re ignoring all of the Switch issues with that game.

(0:47:30) Al: You know, and all the, like, the Harvest Moon’s…

(0:47:33) Al: Maybe the closest thing we can get to other things that I’ve said are bad, but like…

(0:47:38) Al: We’ve talked about them before, they’re getting better and it feels like they’re actually trying there.

(0:47:44) Al: Yeah, almost everything that I’ve been negative about, it’s been…

(0:47:47) Al: I don’t like this, but I can understand why other people would.

(0:47:50) Al: And this game is, I don’t like this, and I don’t think you should play this game.

(0:47:50) Micah: - Yeah.

(0:47:55) Al: I think that this game.

(0:47:56) Al: Exists purely to try and cash in on an existing popular genre, and I do not understand how

(0:48:06) Al: this game ended up in the way that it did.

(0:48:08) Micah: hmm it’s

(0:48:09) Al: And it’s still not technically out yet, so there’s no reviews on Steam, but that’ll be

(0:48:14) Al: fun to watch when it does.

(0:48:17) Al: That’ll be so funny.

(0:48:17) Micah: watch you’re in the distinct minority for people who

(0:48:24) Al: I mean, I’m, I’m fascinated because there are people who say

(0:48:26) Al: that they’re excited about this game. And there are curators

(0:48:29) Al: who’ve reviewed it and said that it was good. But I feel like

(0:48:32) Al: they’re just saying that but everything

(0:48:34) Micah: Yeah, all I’ve heard about the game, I’ve heard from you, so I guess let that say what

(0:48:43) Micah: it says about it.

(0:48:46) Micah: Yeah, I’m curious, I’m gonna download that demo though, and then the next time that we

(0:48:53) Micah: talk on an episode, I’ll save all my thoughts for it.

(0:48:55) Al: I mean, feel free to send me a message and I can get some feedback in the episode next week.

(0:49:04) Al: So we have two games that have released Roadmaps, the first of which is Paleo Pines.

(0:49:09) Al: They appear to be bringing a new Kickstarter out this year, but they haven’t said what it is other

(0:49:17) Al: than it. I think they’re saying that it’s more content for Paleo Pines rather than a new game.

(0:49:23) Micah: Oh, okay. That was going to be my question. Is it paleopines related or hmm.

(0:49:25) Al: It’s a DLC Kickstarter, maybe? It’s hard to know exactly, but based on what they’re saying,

(0:49:32) Al: I’m pretty sure they’re saying it’s more Paleo Pines because they’re talking about

(0:49:36) Al: the Paleo Pines Roadmap. What else did they say? Yes, we’ve been open about the challenges we’ve

(0:49:43) Al: faced as a studio and we’re thrilled about the possibility of reuniting some of the original team

(0:49:47) Al: to bring more content to Paleo Pines. We want to be totally transparent with everyone in late

(0:49:53) Al: 2024 when things were particularly

(0:49:55) Al: bleak, we really considered shuttering the project altogether. The financial and emotional

(0:49:59) Al: strain was significant. However, after careful consideration, we realized that stopping wouldn’t

(0:50:03) Al: be fair to our dedicated team or our supportive community.

(0:50:07) Al: So much passion has been poured to this project, and your support through Plushie & Merck says

(0:50:10) Al: has been instrumental in keeping us going. We’re still here and we’re completely rejuvenated

(0:50:15) Al: to make things happen this year. Our vibe for 2025 is all about collaborating with our

(0:50:20) Al: players more closely than ever before through our kickstarter, our research project.

(0:50:25) Al: Thank you and more. Thank you so much for still being here and we hope to do you proud

(0:50:28) Al: this year. And then they have a PDF linked with the roadmap that says that their kickstarter

(0:50:30) Micah: - Okay.

(0:50:34) Al: is going to launch in April.

(0:50:36) Micah: Yeah, so that, I mean, that does sound

(0:50:38) Micah: like it’s very specifically paleopiance.

(0:50:42) Al: Yeah, which I mean, some everyone I know that’s played it has loved it.

(0:50:43) Micah: Yeah, I don’t know what the research project is.

(0:50:47) Micah: Yeah, it’s really cute.

(0:50:49) Micah: It’s a lot of fun.

(0:50:50) Micah: I guess I’m kind of shocked.

(0:50:53) Micah: I didn’t realize that they were having,

(0:50:55) Micah: that they were struggling as much as they were,

(0:50:59) Micah: because I thought that it was pretty well received.

(0:51:00) Micah: I think that anybody that I’ve talked to that’s played it has really enjoyed it.

(0:51:04) Micah: But yeah, I’m excited to see more from it.

(0:51:08) Micah: I’m happy that they’re not, you know, I’m always happy to hear that

(0:51:11) Micah: a developer is not, you know, having to to shutter anything.

(0:51:17) Micah: But I just for paleopines and specific,

(0:51:21) Micah: I’m excited to see more content for it because it’s very cute.

(0:51:24) Al: Yeah.

(0:51:25) Micah: They did a great job with it.

(0:51:26) Al: Because of the plum group.

(0:51:26) Micah: That’s a pretty good.

(0:51:28) Micah: I was just gonna say it’s a pretty good road map though.

(0:51:30) Micah: It’s very detailed so…

(0:51:31) Al: It’s very, it’s very detailed, which means that it will definitely not be 100 percent, right?

(0:51:35) Micah: Yep, yep, it’s too specific, yeah.

(0:51:39) Al: Too detailed, too specific.

(0:51:41) Al: Yeah.

(0:51:43) Al: I can see the Kickstarter going in April, as they say, but everything else, I think, opened and pitched a little bit.

(0:51:50) Micah: Okay, so this says the survey stage of our power of peaceful play research that so that’s

(0:51:59) Micah: their research project that they’re referring

(0:52:00) Al: Yeah. Yeah, so I didn’t cover this on the podcast, but in fact, well, because this is

(0:52:06) Al: the first episode since they announced it, apparently. But yeah, there’s another thing

(0:52:09) Al: on Steam, which is the power of peaceful play, a research project. We want to share something

(0:52:14) Al: exciting with you all. We’ve received a small amount of funding to undertake a research project

(0:52:17) Al: into the power of wholesome gaming and paleopines in particular on emotional and mental health

(0:52:23) Al: with a focus on neurodiverist/divergent players. This research will be done through online surveys

(0:52:28) Al: both quantitative and qualitative.

(0:52:30) Al: We want to find out what parts of wholesome,

(0:52:32) Al: cosy, peaceful gaming really promote what parts of wholesome, cosy, peaceful gaming

(0:52:39) Al: really promote relaxation, focus and other positive emotions.

(0:52:42) Al: And this research will help us identify which game design elements may contribute

(0:52:46) Al: to this positive impact to inform future game development,

(0:52:49) Al: both for Paleopines and the wider gaming industry.

(0:52:52) Al: And their first survey is linked in steam.

(0:52:55) Al: If you want to go and do it, that will be open until the 4th of March,

(0:52:58) Al: which will be nearly

(0:53:00) Al: a week after this episode comes out, and they say the research is independently funded

(0:53:02) Micah: Okay, that’s very cool

(0:53:05) Al: separate from game and merchandise development, so it’s not like propping up their game development.

(0:53:10) Micah: Sure, yeah, that’s very cool. I like that good on them

(0:53:11) Al: Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see what the outcome is of that, but if you want to partake

(0:53:18) Al: in their research, the Google form is linked on their Steam page, and I will probably link

(0:53:25) Al: it in our show notes if I remember. We shall see.

(0:53:30) Micah: That’s a crucial step

(0:53:30) Al: We also have a roadmap for Echoes of the Plum Grove who just released their Switch version

(0:53:43) Al: like last week, I think. So they have detailed three updates coming, one in March, one in April,

(0:53:50) Al: and one in May. I don’t believe that. We’ll see. That’s very fast to get three updates out.

(0:53:56) Micah: That is quick.

(0:53:59) Al: the old.

(0:54:01) Al: It’s mostly content, but what I will say I’m finding interesting is the April update,

(0:54:07) Al: which adds custom controls, and like some other control related things,

(0:54:13) Al: and also better modding support, which is always good.

(0:54:15) Micah: Hmm and pinning. I don’t really know what that. Oh, maybe like wish listing sort of like

(0:54:22) Al: Yeah, I don’t know what that means.

(0:54:24) Micah: Hmm. Yeah, I have no idea

(0:54:26) Al: I don’t think I played the game enough to know what that would mean.

(0:54:30) Al: So I’m sure we’ll get more information on it when the actual update comes out.

(0:54:34) Micah: Sure. I haven’t played the game at all, so you would know better than I was.

(0:54:40) Al: Yeah, so there we go. That is another roadmap. We love a good roadmap.

(0:54:47) Al: All right, I think that’s all the news. So it’s now time to talk about one of Micah’s Fiverr Games.

(0:54:52) Al: Fiverr Games, Natsumon 20th Century Summer Kid. Before we get into it, I will say, I’m so sorry,

(0:55:00) Al: Micah, I have tried so many times to play this game and I just can’t. I do need to talk to you

(0:55:06) Al: about the ghost girl though, that is one thing I will need to discuss. But

(0:55:10) Micah: I’m excited to hear why, so I think it’s a good, okay.

(0:55:18) Al: Okay. I mean, shall I talk about that first then? Let’s talk about that first and then

(0:55:22) Al: you can get into talking about the actual game. I think this is 100% a me problem. This

(0:55:29) Al: is absolutely not a problem with the game. Like I said before, most of the games I’ve

(0:55:35) Al: not been a fan of is it is not a problem with the game. It is a problem with me. I just

(0:55:42) Al: can’t get… This is going to sound so silly for a podcast on Cottagecore Games.

(0:55:48) Al: It is too relaxed for me. It is too slow. It is too unfocused.

(0:55:58) Micah: So I would be intrigued to see if I if I took you and I plopped you in the middle of the game

(0:56:06) Al: That is very possible that I would feel differently because there are some games like it’s not

(0:56:06) Micah: What your what your feeling would be at that point?

(0:56:14) Al: rare for me to take like a week to get my first two hours in a game and then I’ll get

(0:56:19) Al: another hundred hours in the next two weeks.

(0:56:23) Al: But I almost always do manage to push through and I’m so like it just it almost puts me

(0:56:31) Al: to sleep with how slow it is and how unfocused because the game again the game

(0:56:36) Al: starts off right let’s let me this feels like a good place to start right so we’ve got you are

(0:56:40) Micah: Set the stage.

(0:56:42) Al: a kid who’s gone to this town for your summer holidays and you’re you’re showing around the

(0:56:49) Al: house and you’re showing you’re like you’ve got your bag and you empty out into your desk and

(0:56:54) Al: you’ve got your your different things including your journal which by the way the saving in the

(0:56:58) Al: in the journal in this very cute I love that that’s that is really good this is a really nice thing

(0:57:03) Al: is that like after you do an activity and you’ve

(0:57:06) Al: saved, it like populates the journal with what you did. Really love that. It is so nice.

(0:57:10) Micah: Mm hmm. Not just populates it with what you did, but it’s it’s in the it’s a sketchbook.

(0:57:17) Micah: Right. So it’s like in the style of your character who is this kid is drawing pictures,

(0:57:24) Micah: like colored pencil pictures of all of the things that he did that day. Right.

(0:57:28) Al: Yeah, it’s adorable. I love it. It’s so good. Especially as one of my one of my kids loves

(0:57:29) Micah: So it’s very charming. Yeah.

(0:57:35) Al: to draw and he will draw everything it like it really, you know, feels real to me, right? Like

(0:57:40) Micah: - Mm-hmm.

(0:57:40) Al: that is like I wasn’t really a drawing kit. That’s not my thing. But I have now experienced that with

(0:57:47) Al: having a kid who does draw. And it just yeah, it just feels like a kid would do that sort of thing.

(0:57:52) Al: I did this, I did that and little really bad drawings, but it’s cute.

(0:57:58) Al: And then it kind of goes, okay, go talk to people. And you’re like, what?

(0:58:04) Micah: So. Just to rewind a little bit, the the core of it, you’re right,

(0:58:05) Al: What do you what do you what do you mean? Talk to people.

(0:58:13) Micah: is it’s this kid who is kind of plopped in the small town for his his summer,

(0:58:20) Micah: which is essentially just a month.

(0:58:22) Micah: It’s a it’s a the game takes place over 31 days.

(0:58:28) Micah: And you are your family is part of us in this one.

(0:58:34) Micah: In specific, your family is part of a circus.

(0:58:37) Micah: Your dad and your mom run a circus, a traveling circus.

(0:58:42) Micah: And this town is where they are setting up for their next circus gig.

(0:58:48) Micah: So they have things that they need to take care of.

(0:58:52) Micah: So you are plopped in this small town with.

(0:58:57) Micah: Initially, some of your circus friends and family, I guess you would say,

(0:59:02) Micah: You know, they’re just, they.

(0:59:04) Micah: The, the, the people who work in the circle, you know, the acts and the circus and stuff like that.

(0:59:09) Micah: Uh, and so you’re all staying in this house together, um, with the, the woman who’s hosting you.

(0:59:18) Micah: And it is a very small rural Japanese town.

(0:59:23) Micah: Um, and it takes place, uh, you know, at the, the turn of the century, which is 20th century kid, you know, that’s the whole.

(0:59:34) Micah: That’s the name of it.

(0:59:35) Micah: Uh, so there’s not a lot going on, right?

(0:59:39) Micah: Like there’s not a lot of like, there’s no video games.

(0:59:42) Micah: There’s no cell phones.

(0:59:44) Micah: There’s no, it’s, it’s very much just like you are, you got to go outside, you got to play, you got to, you know, maybe catch some bugs, maybe go fishing.

(0:59:55) Micah: Uh, but as the game develops over time, there’s all of these things that you have to do.

(1:00:01) Micah: and it becomes much more of a.

(1:00:04) Micah: Time management and resource meant like you know sort of resource management more in the sense of the the time management aspect of it and you are starting to.

(1:00:18) Micah: kind of manage all of these these other things that are happening, so when you get to the the 15th today I guess this is you know maybe spoilers but like not really spoilers I don’t know.

(1:00:30) Al: let’s just let’s yeah like let let’s just let’s just go for it if you really care if anything

(1:00:31) Micah: it’s going to be hard to like talk about this without.

(1:00:36) Al: of you’ve heard about this game is interesting and you don’t want to be spoiled go play the game

(1:00:41) Al: then uh but yeah we’re I don’t think we’re gonna hold against that stuff so yeah let’s go for it

(1:00:42) Micah: Yeah. Yeah. So for, for the first portion of the game, it’s, it’s the first 15 days.

(1:00:55) Micah: It’s kind of this lead up to, uh, you know, more people, because when you first get there,

(1:01:02) Micah: it’s just you and a few people from the circus. It’s not everybody. Uh, so, you know, cause

(1:01:08) Micah: They’ve all got their like own things going on.

(1:01:10) Micah: So then they, they are like, Oh, well.

(1:01:12) Micah: So eventually they do come to the town and, uh, you know, you add these characters into

(1:01:18) Micah: the story.

(1:01:19) Micah: Um, and it really becomes a lot about the people in the town, what they’re doing, uh,

(1:01:28) Micah: what their lives are like and how you can help them or affect their lives.

(1:01:35) Micah: Uh, you know, like, there’s a reporter who is trying to get.

(1:01:42) Micah: His paper, you know, the, the small town paper, uh, some stories so that there’s some excitement

(1:01:50) Micah: and stuff.

(1:01:51) Micah: So, uh, you know, when you talk to him, he asks you about what’s been going on and what

(1:01:55) Micah: you’ve been doing and you fill him in, uh, and over time, then his paper starts to do

(1:02:01) Micah: well.

(1:02:02) Micah: If you are, you know, focusing on that or, um, and there are things that are missable.

(1:02:07) Micah: It’s not like it’s, you know, all of this stuff just plays out super linear.

(1:02:11) Micah: You can focus on–

(1:02:12) Micah: –whatever you want to focus on–

(1:02:14) Micah: –and that’s kind of the–

(1:02:16) Micah: –you know, the main engine of the game is that–

(1:02:20) Micah: –you are living out your summer month–

(1:02:23) Micah: –this summer month however you want.

(1:02:25) Micah: You can spend the entire 31 days just fishing–

(1:02:29) Micah: –and doing nothing else, ignoring everybody in the town–

(1:02:32) Micah: –not doing any of the story stuff–

(1:02:36) Micah: –and the game will progress all the way to that 31–

(1:02:40) Micah: 31, the 31st day.

(1:02:42) Micah: 31st day and then if the game will end, you’ll get an ending and then that’s it, you know, you can you clear it you can go back and do a new game plus and play it a different way.

(1:02:54) Micah: Or you can min max and do absolutely everything that you can possibly do every day throughout the the entire month.

(1:03:05) Micah: And that involves all kinds of things like making all of the connections that you can make with all of the characters learning all that you can.

(1:03:13) Micah: And that’s it really is about the the unique characters and towns people and the people in the circus that you’re a part that you’re part of and it’s learning about them learning their secrets and they’re the stuff that they have going on in their lives, you know, some of it gets really deep.

(1:03:32) Micah: Some of it gets really emotional.

(1:03:42) Micah: Some of it is just kind of goofy, you know, like there’s there’s a very suspicious guy because part of the premise for this too is that your your family’s circus was unable to pay their they were doing so poorly that they were unable to pay their previous venue and they’re

(1:04:03) Micah: Indebted to that venue and not really like on the run, but, you know, like they they just they owe money.

(1:04:12) Micah: So there is this suspicious guy that is kind of like eavesdropping on you and your your circus mates and you get the idea that maybe he’s like a debt collector or something, you know, or like maybe he’s trying to and it turns out that he’s kind of just a goofy detective

(1:04:33) Micah: that is just eavesdrops on everybody in the town and he doesn’t really know what to do because he has no direction for himself.

(1:04:42) Micah: He wants to have a like big break for something and he doesn’t really can’t really figure it out. So there’s all these like really interesting little quirks to all these characters that you learn as you progress through the 31 days and how you how you play out that time and who you interact with and what you focus on.

(1:05:03) Micah: You know, there’s all kinds of other stuff, too, like there’s a museum and there’s fossils and you can add fish and, you know, much in the way that like Animal Crossing.

(1:05:12) Micah: Is where you add the fossils and the fish and the bugs and stuff and fill out the museum that way. There’s.

(1:05:20) Al: I think as you’ve been talking, I think I’ve figured out my issue with the game.

(1:05:28) Al: Because I do think that if I were to get into the game, I would probably enjoy it.

(1:05:33) Al: However, if we compare this to say Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, those games also have like the

(1:05:43) Al: stories and the people and the stuff that you’re there to learn. And I loved that in Stardew Valley,

(1:05:51) Al: I think I didn’t get started in Stardew Valley because of that. I got started with farming and

(1:05:58) Al: you start by farming and it’s like this is what you do. You go out every day and you plant your

(1:06:02) Al: crops and then you water them and then you harvest them. And that was like the core part of that game

(1:06:06) Al: was doing that. And everything else was kind of background to start with. And the problem I think

(1:06:14) Al: here is there is not that that core loop doesn’t exist. The core loop in the

(1:06:20) Al: game is you go out and you talk to people and you try and figure things out. And I think that’s

(1:06:29) Al: my problem. That’s a hard thing for me to grasp onto without something else there to start me off,

(1:06:36) Al: to then get me interested in other things.

(1:06:38) Micah: So they do kind of try to try to put you in the sleep right where like when you first start the game when you first get there, they they say, you know, go do this or go do that.

(1:06:50) Micah: And that’s where you start to learn about like, you know, the fishing and the bug catching and stuff and really the first day, the majority of what you could do is get acquainted with the people in the town, sort of some of them are busy some of them, you know,

(1:07:06) Micah: But the majority of what you’re doing is just like.

(1:07:09) Micah: I’m going to catch some fish and I’m going to catch some bugs.

(1:07:11) Micah: And maybe the the woman who’s hosting our group,

(1:07:17) Micah: you know, she’s she’s cooking meals and she’s cooking dinner and stuff like that.

(1:07:22) Micah: And she wants some fish.

(1:07:24) Micah: And maybe I bring some fish and she cooks it and stuff like that.

(1:07:27) Micah: It’s just like little quests, little fetch quest stuff.

(1:07:32) Micah: And then over time, what the what what happens

(1:07:37) Micah: is use your

(1:07:38) Micah: your over the next couple days your own loop starts to form where they have every morning they

(1:07:46) Micah: have daily radio calisthenics where you and a bunch of people in the town go to the local shrine

(1:07:54) Micah: and you do the radio calisthenics together and then after that you know there’s somebody who wants

(1:08:01) Micah: you to light all of the the lanterns on a path and he wants you to do that every day or not you know

(1:08:06) Micah: that he says do it so many.

(1:08:09) Micah: I don’t know how many times in a row, or like so many times and then report back to me and ultimately what that turns into is like you’re doing it every day, right, like, so then you figure out why, because those lanterns are right by the shrine, then after I do the calisthenics, then I’m going to light all the lanterns, and then, you know, there’s this thing that I can do.

(1:08:30) Micah: The loop starts to form over time, and the way that it’s, it’s set up is each day is progresses from morning.

(1:08:38) Micah: You are forced back to the house for dinner, they come and find you wherever you are and they say it’s dinnertime, so you go back, you eat dinner with your group, your little family, and then you have the evening to go out and do whatever you want until they tell you that it’s, it’s time to go to bed.

(1:09:04) Micah: So you have two chunks of the day

(1:09:07) Micah: and it becomes kind of figure.

(1:09:09) Micah: These are the things that I can do during the daytime

(1:09:12) Micah: because these people are at these locations.

(1:09:15) Micah: And if I’m gonna be bringing these bugs to the museum

(1:09:20) Micah: I have to do it during the daytime.

(1:09:22) Micah: And then there’s a band that plays that

(1:09:28) Micah: one of the missions is to hear them play

(1:09:31) Micah: a certain amount of songs

(1:09:32) Micah: and they’ll be at nighttime or whatever.

(1:09:34) Micah: So I have to do that.

(1:09:36) Micah: So you kind of, as you learn about

(1:09:39) Micah: the way that the town functions, who’s doing what at each time, and what your

(1:09:44) Micah: quests entail, your your gameplay loop starts to form for yourself. Again, you

(1:09:50) Micah: can choose to not do any of this, but that’s where, you know, like if you

(1:09:52) Al: Yeah, well, I think this is the problem. You’ve only reinforced my theory about why this is,

(1:09:55) Micah: are trying to complete the quest, then that’s where that starts to come into

(1:09:58) Micah: play.

(1:10:04) Al: because when I was like, oh, there’s no like core, this is the gameplay loop and everything else is

(1:10:11) Al: like other things that you can do. You mentioned about four things that would have been that

(1:10:18) Al: example. And I think that’s the problem is there isn’t one thing that goes like this is

(1:10:23) Al: the game. And there’s so many other things you can do. And you can learn them as you go,

(1:10:29) Al: et cetera, et cetera. But like, when you’re, if you take stardew as the example, you start the

(1:10:34) Al: game and it’s like, here are turnips seeds, grow these turnips seeds. You’re like, okay, cool,

(1:10:38) Al: I’ll do that. And like, and then it goes, oh, and also you should say hello to everybody in the town.

(1:10:42) Al: But you start out by doing that very core. This is the point of this game is farming. And yeah,

(1:10:50) Al: Yeah, you don’t technically need to do that,

(1:10:54) Al: but it’s very in your face of like, this is the thing to start off with.

(1:10:58) Al: If you don’t know what anything else to do, do this.

(1:11:00) Al: Whereas I think this game does.

(1:11:02) Al: If you don’t know anything else to do, here are five options and you’re like,

(1:11:06) Al: I don’t want five options.

(1:11:08) Al: I don’t know which one I want to do.

(1:11:10) Al: Give me one thing to do.

(1:11:12) Al: And I think that’s the problem.

(1:11:14) Micah: Yeah, and I think the core like so like there there is a there’s a couple things that are like core. I would I would label as like core mechanics.

(1:11:24) Micah: One of them being upgrading your stamina. So you have these stickers that show up on the bottom of the screen that are like basically your stamina bar.

(1:11:36) Micah: And by doing certain things or completing certain tasks, you’re collecting these stickers that will build up your stamina over time.

(1:11:44) Micah: And those are it’s kind of a dual purpose. Like it’s your stamina bar. And also it’s the like signifier of your progress. You know, like you’ve got all of these stickers. So it’s, you know, this is how much stuff you’ve done and whatever.

(1:12:00) Micah: And that’s introduced really early. That’s like one of the first things that they introduce and that, you know, when you do quests, then you get those stickers.

(1:12:10) Micah: And so there are, you know, I think also in addition to that, a lot

(1:12:14) Micah: of what they show you early on, like, yes, the one of the primary,

(1:12:19) Micah: one of the like primary quests that they first introduce is go speak to everybody.

(1:12:24) Micah: But you can really like do that over the course of three days.

(1:12:27) Micah: You know, it’s not something that has to be done immediately.

(1:12:30) Al: I don’t think you probably could do it in one day.

(1:12:30) Micah: But then there’s a lot of yeah, but then there’s a lot of like, you know,

(1:12:36) Micah: like I said, catch a fish because she wants to cook the fish

(1:12:39) Micah: for dinner or something, introduces the fishing mechanic.

(1:12:42) Micah: And then it kind of shows you like, Hey, I can just.

(1:12:45) Micah: For the rest of the night, I can go fishing or I can catch bugs.

(1:12:49) Micah: Um, and you get that, like positive feedback of every time you catch a new

(1:12:56) Micah: bug, every time you catch a new fish, every time you, uh, do something new,

(1:13:02) Micah: you get that sketch in the sketchbook.

(1:13:04) Micah: And that’s also kind of like a, um, like a progress indicator, but also like

(1:13:12) Micah: I said, that positive feedback.

(1:13:13) Micah: And that’s something for me.

(1:13:14) Micah: Especially like that’s almost the completionist point for me is like, I want to fill up that sketch, but I want to get those sketches because I want to feel like I’m seeing as much as I can throughout my playthrough of the game, you know.

(1:13:30) Micah: So, it introduces that but the I think the like the one of the main mechanics is introduced at the halfway point. So, you know, like I said, there’s something that happens.

(1:13:44) Micah: That happens at the 15 day mark, where, as you’re going through the that that first 15 days you’re, you know, getting associated with every you’re getting acquainted with everyone you’re getting associated with the town.

(1:13:58) Micah: They talk about, you know, they used to have this, this summer festival and they don’t anymore because there’s no attendance for it people don’t stop caring.

(1:14:10) Micah: and they want to do it again.

(1:14:11) Micah: So, you know, you offer up this idea that, well,

(1:14:14) Micah: we can pair it with a circus show.

(1:14:17) Micah: And so that, you know, maybe that’ll entice people to come to the festival too.

(1:14:23) Micah: So the first day that that actually happens is the 15th.

(1:14:27) Micah: And from the 15th on, now you have the ability to, every night, you can run a circus show.

(1:14:35) Micah: And because the circus manager hasn’t made it to the town,

(1:14:43) Micah: you are essentially

(1:14:45) Micah: planning out, these are the things that are going to be in the show.

(1:14:48) Micah: This is the first act.

(1:14:49) Micah: This is the second act.

(1:14:50) Micah: This is the third act.

(1:14:51) Micah: And this is like the final act.

(1:14:52) Micah: This is the music that’s going to play through it.

(1:14:55) Micah: And you have to plan this circus show before the circus show happens at night.

(1:15:00) Micah: There’s also a fireworks show that you can have

(1:15:04) Micah: that is paired with the festival.

(1:15:06) Micah: And you work with the pyrotechnic guy

(1:15:11) Micah: who runs the fireworks to pick out.

(1:15:14) Micah: What fireworks are going to go to like make sure that it’s a good show.

(1:15:17) Micah: So it becomes this, you know, this, this kind of like management game where

(1:15:22) Micah: you’re managing the circus, you’re managing the fireworks show.

(1:15:25) Micah: There’s things that like upgrades to the circus that you can get like better

(1:15:29) Micah: equipment, better outfits for the, the,

(1:15:33) Micah: the people who are in the circus to improve the rating that you get.

(1:15:38) Micah: Cause then there’s this, this, this bar of, you know,

(1:15:41) Micah: the amount of profit and success that you’re getting from the circus and whether

(1:15:44) Micah: it’s actually, you know, you’re doing well and all of those upgrades and stuff

(1:15:49) Micah: affect that so that hopefully you can make enough money to be able to pay for

(1:15:55) Micah: the venue instead of, you know,

(1:15:58) Micah: not being able to pay for them for the venue like you did with the previous town

(1:16:02) Micah: that you, that your circus troop was in.

(1:16:05) Micah: And so that really becomes from day 15 on that becomes a big part of the,

(1:16:11) Micah: You know, the, the, the loop is that the, the majority of the.

(1:16:14) Micah: is doing all this other stuff, like, you know, doing the interaction things that you do with

(1:16:20) Micah: the townspeople to develop their stories. And then at night, it’s planning out the festivities

(1:16:29) Micah: for the summer festivities for the evening. And that becomes a big part of it. Granted,

(1:16:35) Micah: it takes to day 15 to get there, but, you know, once you get there, then the game really changes

(1:16:43) Micah: quite a bit and as you go through

(1:16:45) Micah: the game to different parts of the

(1:16:46) Micah: map open up so that there are new

(1:16:48) Micah: things that get added, like the

(1:16:49) Micah: museum gets added at one point.

(1:16:53) Micah: You know, there’s a

(1:16:56) Micah: another big like

(1:16:59) Micah: like cave area that gets added.

(1:17:01) Micah: There’s, you know,

(1:17:04) Micah: as part of the DLC, there’s like a

(1:17:05) Micah: separate island that you can go

(1:17:08) Micah: to at one point that you can spend

(1:17:09) Micah: your day doing stuff on the island.

(1:17:11) Micah: And there’s a whole like mystery

(1:17:13) Micah: kind of like detect.

(1:17:14) Micah: The story like kid detective story that plays out on an island.

(1:17:18) Micah: So, um, there’s tons of stuff to do.

(1:17:22) Micah: It just, you know, it, it is very gradual in like introducing it all to you.

(1:17:30) Micah: And I think part of that is because millennium kitchen, the developer for

(1:17:34) Micah: this, the, these, their, you know, primary game is this franchise, which is

(1:17:41) Micah: the Boku no Natsu Yasumi franchise, which just means

(1:17:44) Micah: my summer vacation that translates to my summer vacation. And there have been multiple of these

(1:17:51) Micah: games. This is what the Shin Chan games were and all that. And those all were much more relaxed

(1:17:57) Micah: than this one is, where it was very much just, there was, you know, stuff that was going on.

(1:18:02) Micah: It’s like, Oh, you have to do this. And there’s like a mystery here and there or whatever. But

(1:18:07) Micah: like, there’s so much to do in this one, by the time you get to, you know, the first.

(1:18:15) Micah: Five days, then 10 days, then 15 days on. That it’s a pretty drastic change from what they

(1:18:26) Micah: have historically done for the summer vacation games. It’s also the first time that they’ve done

(1:18:34) Micah: kind of like this open world ish, like third person 3D, the majority of the time.

(1:18:44) Micah: It’s been, you know, pre-rendered backgrounds and, you know, fixed camera angles and stuff like that,

(1:18:53) Micah: which really is, you know, has had a very wonderful and beautiful like art style to it. It’s really

(1:19:01) Micah: been a part of the charm, but this is a new, you know, they’re trying to feels like very much like

(1:19:06) Micah: they’re trying to modernize it. And so, you know, there’s a lot that’s changed from the previous

(1:19:13) Micah: ones and I think this is kind of like

(1:19:14) Micah: they start early you know early on in the game it’s it’s a kind of more gradual than it is like

(1:19:22) Micah: just very abrupt like here’s a ton of stuff to do right away you know um so I think in the context

(1:19:30) Micah: of of what they’re they’re used to doing or what there’s the series is it’s uh it makes a little

(1:19:37) Micah: bit more sense of why it’s you know not like immediately you know day one is you’re doing

(1:19:43) Micah: doing circus stuff.

(1:19:44) Micah: And why it like kind of leads into that.

(1:19:44) Al: Yeah I guess I’m not trying to say that it should have everything all at the

(1:19:51) Al: start I think that would actually make it worse like I don’t think the gradual

(1:19:54) Al: aspect is the problem I think it’s the the lack of a single clear if you don’t

(1:20:00) Al: know what to do do this is I think the thing that’s missing because I think

(1:20:07) Al: that everything that it has in the game is is lovely and I think that I actually

(1:20:11) Al: really enjoyed like the

(1:20:15) Al: like travel in the game, stuff like that. But I just, I was just kind of moving around

(1:20:23) Al: the world existing and not really knowing what it was I wanted to do. I think that’s the only

(1:20:26) Micah: Mm-hmm

(1:20:29) Al: thing that I’m trying to say here. And I don’t think this is a like massive downer on the game

(1:20:33) Al: because there are probably lots of people who that’s not a problem, right? And they will

(1:20:38) Al: figure out what they want to do. And I think, you know, that is literally only something I think

(1:20:45) Al: for new people, right? Because if I go into Stardew now, I know exactly what I’m going to do,

(1:20:48) Al: right? Like, I don’t need to be told to farm. But that first time that I played, I think I did,

(1:20:50) Micah: Yeah, yeah, and I think that, you know, there’s some other things that are unique to this

(1:21:02) Micah: or that to this, this franchise and this series of games is that, you know, just for a little

(1:21:10) Micah: bit of like, background on it to the whole idea of this is, and this may just be where

(1:21:17) Micah: It’s, you know, just not for you necessarily.

(1:21:22) Micah: That the concept of the game and the reason that they they created these games to begin with was they wanted to it was, you know, these game developers that became salary men in Japan and, you know, they’re working constantly and they they’ve lost their childhood.

(1:21:46) Micah: And this is suppose these games are supposed to be this.

(1:21:50) Micah: This is your childhood again, you’re reliving your childhood, you know, you’re reliving a, the summer months in your childhood where you don’t have to do anything you, you have no direction, you, you relax, you have no responsibilities, and that’s where the premise comes from.

(1:22:01) Al: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, you’re totally right. And I guess maybe that’s a point, like maybe

(1:22:14) Al: it would feel weird if it did have that, because that’s the entire point of the game. But I guess

(1:22:20) Al: that’s, I mean, we’re in real time, me figuring out why I didn’t like the game, right?

(1:22:24) Micah: Yeah, yeah, 100%. And it’s totally valid, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s just

(1:22:27) Al: And the thing is that it feels a little bit like…

(1:22:31) Al: I feel like one of those people going, “Oh, Dark Souls should have an easy mode.”

(1:22:37) Al: I’m not saying they should necessarily change the game.

(1:22:40) Al: I’m just saying this is the reason, I guess, why I didn’t get into it despite everything.

(1:22:42) Micah: Mm-hmm, right

(1:22:46) Al: Let’s talk about some other stuff.

(1:22:48) Micah: Sure

(1:22:49) Al: One thing I really liked was the travel.

(1:22:51) Al: I loved trying to climb up the buildings, which is just so silly.

(1:22:54) Micah: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah

(1:22:56) Al: They didn’t need to do that.

(1:22:57) Al: This game could have worked entirely if you were at ground level or going up steps.

(1:23:01) Al: But they allowed you to claim buildings.

(1:23:04) Micah: - Yeah, which becomes a pretty big part of it too.

(1:23:06) Micah: Like there’s whole milestones in the game

(1:23:08) Micah: for climbing all of the like highest points

(1:23:14) Micah: of certain to like the highest building

(1:23:16) Micah: and the highest mountain top and so on and so forth.

(1:23:18) Micah: ‘Cause they make this reference early on

(1:23:21) Micah: and the first day when you get there

(1:23:23) Micah: that like your character likes to climb stuff

(1:23:26) Micah: and gets in trouble for it sometimes.

(1:23:29) Micah: And then, you know, you’re upgrading your stamina

(1:23:34) Micah: and you get more stuff higher, you know,

(1:23:36) Micah: and that becomes part of the game.

(1:23:41) Micah: But that wasn’t part of it prior to this game.

(1:23:44) Micah: You know, you were pretty much just at ground level

(1:23:46) Micah: all the time.

(1:23:47) Micah: It was just like, you know,

(1:23:49) Micah: wandering around towns and stuff.

(1:23:50) Micah: So that is something for this series and this franchise

(1:23:53) Micah: like is a completely new aspect to it.

(1:23:56) Micah: So I really did also like the, I like the movement.

(1:24:01) Micah: I’m assuming that you didn’t get to it

(1:24:04) Micah: some other things too like there’s basically like a glider.

(1:24:09) Micah: You know, it’s called a Tengu Cape,

(1:24:10) Micah: which is, you know, like a Japanese mythological,

(1:24:17) Micah: you know, character is a Tengu.

(1:24:20) Micah: And there’s this whole story about like Natsuman

(1:24:23) Micah: and the Tengu and so on that takes place in the game.

(1:24:27) Micah: That’s part of like the lore,

(1:24:28) Micah: but the Tengu Cape is basically like

(1:24:31) Micah: the Breath of the Wild glider, right?

(1:24:34) Micah: Jump off of, you can climb all the way up to the highest

(1:24:36) Micah: point and then jump off and glide endlessly

(1:24:39) Micah: wherever you want to go.

(1:24:41) Micah: But it’s a very missable item.

(1:24:44) Micah: It’s like something that is, you know,

(1:24:47) Micah: it’s like a bonus reward for seeking out

(1:24:51) Micah: the kind of like hidden lore of the game

(1:24:55) Micah: of the town and stuff.

(1:24:56) Micah: So I do feel a little bit weird about like that being

(1:25:01) Micah: something that’s so

(1:25:04) Micah: hidden because it’s such a big benefit for the traversal in the game, but even even without that, I think just the running and the hopping and climbing stuff functions so well that it’s, you know, it’s just an extra benefit to have the gliding.

(1:25:24) Al: I do like as well how like although with the stamina it’s not just like a hard

(1:25:31) Al: you can’t claim higher than this point there’s lots of things that you can like stop on and

(1:25:36) Micah: » Mm-hmm. Yeah.

(1:25:36) Al: continue claiming after you’ve regained stamina because like I got up some pretty tall buildings

(1:25:42) Al: when I shouldn’t have had the stamina for that because there’s like air conditioning units and

(1:25:50) Al: Windows sales that you can stop on and continue and it’s difficult.

(1:25:54) Al: Cause you might trip and fall and that’s it if you overextend yourself,

(1:25:56) Micah: - Mm-hmm, right.

(1:25:58) Al: but like it allows you that flexibility, which I thought was pretty fun.

(1:26:02) Micah: Yeah, yeah, it’s really good.

(1:26:04) Micah: There’s only a few things that are like really gated,

(1:26:08) Micah: you know, for like one of them being the lighthouse,

(1:26:11) Micah: like it’s very clear that they want you

(1:26:14) Micah: to really have maxed it, you know,

(1:26:17) Micah: close to maxed stamina at least to be able to climb

(1:26:20) Micah: all the way to the top of the lighthouse

(1:26:22) Micah: because they don’t put any of those stops.

(1:26:25) Micah: There’s, you know, it’s.

(1:26:26) Micah: Very perfectly, it feels very perfectly, uh, very perfectly tall

(1:26:35) Micah: for exactly how much stamina is like, you know, you need to get there.

(1:26:40) Micah: Like it’s very specific.

(1:26:42) Micah: It feels like and deliberate.

(1:26:44) Micah: Um, but other than that, yeah, there’s the majority of things

(1:26:48) Micah: are, are pretty accessible.

(1:26:51) Micah: Um.

(1:26:52) Al: I have a question. So, I encountered a ghost girl. Yes. I found her on a random rooftop

(1:26:54) Micah: - Mm-hmm.

(1:26:56) Micah: - Okay, yeah, you brought up the ghost girl

(1:26:58) Micah: and I was wondering.

(1:27:01) Al: on my first day. I feel like that’s quite early to experience a ghost girl. But my question

(1:27:08) Al: is, are there many kind of mystical elements like that? Or is that like kind of an odd

(1:27:16) Micah: So there’s some, that is definitely an odd one out. There’s some kind of like, you know,

(1:27:27) Micah: I guess, you know, you have things like you, you can come across fossils and like, you know,

(1:27:35) Micah: basically rebuild an entire mammoth, you know, for skeleton, like, stuff that like,

(1:27:42) Micah: Probably that like, you know, a kid’s not actually doing it’s just

(1:27:46) Micah: like, you know, there’s some level of imagination to it. Right? As far as actual mystical stuff goes,

(1:27:48) Al: Yes, of course, yeah.

(1:27:55) Micah: though, that’s pretty much the only thing. There’s some, you know, there’s this, like I said,

(1:28:01) Micah: there’s this like, deeper level lore about Natsuman and the island and one of the specific

(1:28:10) Micah: characters on the island that you kind of learn about and that has, you know,

(1:28:16) Micah: the Tengu and these, this like Japanese mythology. And that is an element, but it’s not really ever

(1:28:25) Micah: very visual to you. It’s more just like talked about, you know. So definitely the ghost girl

(1:28:32) Micah: is like a standout in that regard, but she’s very present throughout the game. You know, she’s,

(1:28:39) Micah: she is, I feel like literally everywhere. So the mechanic for the ghost girl.

(1:28:46) Micah: Is that she’s got these games that you play. It’s basically the ghost of a little girl who

(1:28:52) Micah: just wants to play games with somebody and you are seemingly the only person who can see her.

(1:28:58) Micah: So you are the only person that can play games with her. And she does things like we play tag

(1:29:03) Micah: and you just chase her through, you know, chase, quote unquote, you’re just going to like checkpoints

(1:29:10) Micah: where she’s standing and then she disappears and then reappears at the next checkpoint, you know,

(1:29:14) Micah: Very simple.

(1:29:16) Micah: And that’s like playing tag or there’s a playing targets where she she spawns balloons and you have to shoot them with your acorn gun or one of them is like there’s a single rain boot like a red rain boot on on this porch or something and then you have to go find this this the other red rain boot and bring it back and place it next to it.

(1:29:46) Micah: Like that.

(1:29:48) Micah: But there’s a ton of those throughout the game.

(1:29:50) Micah: I feel like I I felt like I was always encountering I would always because she kind of calls out to you when you’re close so that you know that there’s there’s a mini game nearby.

(1:30:00) Al: Right, yeah, yeah, so what you’re saying is it wasn’t actually that rare for me to find her on the first day then

(1:30:02) Micah: And I feel like I was constantly hearing the.

(1:30:06) Micah: No no and they introduce it early on too because they introduced that you know I mentioned the lighting the lanterns on that path up to the shrine that’s a really early.

(1:30:16) Micah: And that’s the kind of mechanic that they introduce and she’s kind of part of that she’s she’s she’s part of the like you know that’s how they introduce her is you know I I took all the like I’d knock the light lights off of the lanterns or whatever so that you know you’d have to reset them back up or whatever.

(1:30:36) Micah: And that’s when you meet her and it that that kind of triggers the whole thing.

(1:30:40) Micah: There is also a castle on the island and there’s some stuff in the castle that feels a little bit

(1:30:46) Micah: Magical I guess but it also is

(1:30:50) Micah: You know

(1:30:51) Micah: There’s there’s no like creatures in it or anything or like, you know other ghosts or anything like that

(1:30:57) Micah: You know, it’s just like puzzles that you have to do inside the castle

(1:31:01) Micah: So yeah, that’s that’s pretty much it for

(1:31:02) Al: Fair enough.

(1:31:03) Al: Is there anything else you want to talk about this game, because I feel like the problem

(1:31:07) Al: is normally what we do with these games is we cover like, here are the core mechanics,

(1:31:12) Al: and like, here’s what about farming and here’s about fit.

(1:31:14) Al: It doesn’t really feel like this game fits that narrative, and it’s more just like the

(1:31:18) Micah: it is 100% a like, it’s a slice of life game. That’s the whole, you know, the vibe of it.

(1:31:18) Al: game and how it makes you feel, right?

(1:31:31) Micah: It is a very relaxing game. It has some of those, you know, kind of farming game element

(1:31:39) Micah: or like cottage core game elements of fishing and bug catching and, you know, little like

(1:31:48) Micah: management things. And it has a lot of those elements, but they’re in the context of it’s

(1:31:55) Micah: a very relaxing setting. And it does pick up, like I said, halfway through where you’re

(1:32:03) Micah: doing a lot more and you are, you know, buying equipment and new clothes for your circus

(1:32:10) Micah: troupe and stuff like that. But it’s, it’s very much intended to feel like

(1:32:18) Micah: you are living a relaxing life that you would not probably not be able to normally live,

(1:32:26) Micah: especially as a, you know, a carefree kid on summer vacation. I mean, that’s a big part

(1:32:32) Al: That’s why you like this game, isn’t it? You want to have no responsibility.

(1:32:38) Micah: of why they, they make it, you know, so it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s definitely an experience that

(1:32:45) Micah: is unique.

(1:32:49) Micah: I think that it’s a very unique game, and I think it deserves more attention than it gets, because it’s such a charming game, and the characters are so well developed, they’re so well written, there’s such good stories to them, and there’s so much charm in this small town in general.

(1:33:18) Micah: The sound design and everything is beautiful, everything sounds like summer, it’s cicadas, it’s birds chirping, it’s the sounds of the wind, it’s the sounds of the ocean, rustling of leaves and trees and stuff like that.

(1:33:36) Micah: Really well done, and there’s not much music to be had throughout the game, because it’s just the sounds of summer, and then at night, you know, it’s crickets and…

(1:33:49) Micah: You know, as you walk through the town, there’s a little bar that all of the adults in the town go and drink at this bar outside, you know, and they’re all chatting, and the way that that sound design is done is just very much you get the feeling of being on the street with these adults talking, and you know, it’s just such a unique experience that is very much a feel-good experience that you don’t get with a lot of games.

(1:34:19) Micah: The art style is really great, it’s, you know, a very nice game to look at. Everything has this kind of like textured brush to it, so it feels like at any point you could take a still of the game, and it would look like it’s an illustration, you know.

(1:34:39) Micah: Which is something that Millennium Kitchen has always been very good at in all of the Nasi Yasumi games, it’s…

(1:34:48) Micah: Especially with their pre-rendered backgrounds and stuff like that, it’s very beautiful art. The Shin-chan games too, just beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds, beautiful landscapes and, you know, stills of the town that you’re in there, and this is just that, but in a 3D setting.

(1:35:08) Micah: And I think it has such a, there’s such a perfect, you know, it’s unique enough, but there’s still so many.

(1:35:18) Micah: There’s so much to it that intersects with what we enjoy about, you know, cottagecore games or cozy games or whatever you want to call them, that if you enjoy those games, I feel like you owe it to yourself to at least try and see if it’s something for you.

(1:35:41) Micah: This is the most modernized take on it so far. The Shin-chan games…

(1:35:48) Micah: Obviously very good. Those are the first ones that have been, you know, like localized and translated and everything. None of the other Nasi Yasumi games made it stateside, so…

(1:36:03) Micah: Or to the west, so there was no translation. There are fan translations for them, but these are really the first official ones that we’ve gotten. So I think they’re all good starting points, but this is such a modern experience that I think…

(1:36:18) Micah: It’s the best the best introduction to it for people who might be new to it.

(1:36:23) Micah: Yeah, I just really love it and I wish more people would play it.

(1:36:29) Micah: Who knows if we’re going to get anything again from them.

(1:36:34) Micah: I don’t know what the reception was for Natsuman as far as like sales figures go.

(1:36:40) Micah: I don’t think we ever got any of that information.

(1:36:45) Al: Yeah, it’s hard. I tend to look at the review numbers to get a vague idea, but yeah, other

(1:36:52) Al: than that, it doesn’t give you any real clue. It’s in very positive reviews, but it’s only

(1:37:00) Al: a hundred of them. So it’s not, you know, super loads of them.

(1:37:02) Micah: Right. It’s also to I feel like this is an important thing to to mention because.

(1:37:15) Micah: It’s it’s a pretty significant aspect of the game is that they’re short games.

(1:37:22) Micah: So the the the idea is that you want to have subsequent playthroughs of the game

(1:37:28) Micah: because you’re not going to be able to do everything in one run or like, you know,

(1:37:32) Micah: most of the time, if you’re playing this for the first time,

(1:37:34) Micah: you’re not really looking out for certain things and you’ll miss a bunch of stuff.

(1:37:38) Micah: But by the end of it, you’re like, oh, I wish I would have done this

(1:37:41) Micah: or wish I would have done that.

(1:37:42) Micah: And then if you decide to play through it again, then you can go and do those things.

(1:37:48) Micah: And it’s short enough that it gives you the opportunity to do those.

(1:37:51) Micah: I think it’s somewhere in the ballpark of like now short

(1:37:55) Micah: in comparison to most games, I’ll say it’s somewhere in the ballpark

(1:37:59) Micah: of like 15 to 20 hours, and it really depends to…

(1:38:02) Micah: on how you set the time of day, because you can set the time of day in the game.

(1:38:08) Micah: And this is new to this too. They haven’t done this before. You can set it for the time of day

(1:38:14) Micah: to go very slowly so that you can do as much as you want. Or you can set it for the time to progress

(1:38:21) Micah: really fast throughout the day, to shorten the actual gameplay time. So you can crank

(1:38:30) Micah: through the game pretty quickly.

(1:38:32) Micah: If you’re just setting the time progression as fast as possible and just doing the essentials

(1:38:42) Micah: throughout the day and barreling towards that final day of summer.

(1:38:50) Al: Cool. All right. I mean, yeah, I wish I can imagine if it’s only if it’s if it’s time

(1:38:54) Micah: Lots of different endings too, you know. So that’s part of it. Mm-hmm, yeah.

(1:38:59) Al: limited and there’s lots to do. How many times you played through it?

(1:39:02) Micah: Once and like complete one time and there is, I’ve started a second playthrough that I haven’t

(1:39:14) Micah: finished but the kind of the neat thing again this is sort of spoilers but not really, I mean it is.

(1:39:21) Micah: The way that the game ends without giving specifics because there are so many different

(1:39:27) Micah: endings to it is because it’s kind of narrated throughout.

(1:39:33) Micah: This kid as a grown-up reminiscing, you know. So the end of the game essentially is

(1:39:41) Micah: depending on what you did throughout the summer, it’s what that resulted in you as an adult doing

(1:39:50) Micah: with your life. So like maybe what your career path was or what you succeeded in or something

(1:39:56) Micah: like that and there’s kind of like a little recap about that. And that’s kind of classic

(1:40:02) Micah: for these games. They’ve always kind of done that where it’s like you know you as an adult what you

(1:40:07) Micah: did and how it how it affected your life. So yeah pretty neat and unique. I suggest people

(1:40:13) Micah: play it but you know it’s definitely not going to be for everybody like it is not for you, you know.

(1:40:17) Al: Yeah, clearly. But this, I mean, I want to make it clear again, as I do every time,

(1:40:25) Al: this is not me saying the game is bad, this is me saying it’s not for me, right?

(1:40:27) Micah: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, totally.

(1:40:29) Al: It’s not Sugardew Island. All right, well,

(1:40:35) Micah: Yeah, if you’re looking for structure, it definitely not,

(1:40:38) Al: look, everybody’s different with these things.

(1:40:41) Micah: you know, for you, but maybe it is, you know, it gets there,

(1:40:45) Micah: eventually. But yeah, it’s very good.

(1:40:48) Al: It eventually has some structure. Not the selling point. You’d make it out to be.

(1:40:51) Micah: Yes.

(1:40:56) Al: All right. Well, thank you for joining me to finally talk about this game. Six months

(1:40:57) Micah: Okay. Yeah, of course.

(1:41:04) Al: later and I still still didn’t play very much of it. But I tried. I promise I tried. I tried

(1:41:08) Micah: I appreciate you trying.

(1:41:12) Al: so much. Where can people find you on the internet?

(1:41:20) Micah: You can find me,

(1:41:22) Micah: I’m going to say specifically at this point on Blue Sky.

(1:41:27) Micah: You can find me if you just search bike of the brave.

(1:41:31) Micah: It’s I’m on there.

(1:41:33) Micah: You’ll find me.

(1:41:34) Micah: I’m also on Twitch.

(1:41:36) Micah: It very rarely do I

(1:41:39) Micah: You know do some of my shiny hunting live, but sometimes it’s just

(1:41:45) Micah: Mike of the brave there as well. I pretty much anywhere you look

(1:41:49) Micah: You it pretty much anywhere that you can go and type Mike of the brave. It’s probably me

(1:41:54) Al: You can find me at thescotbot on mastodon.scot and bluesky. You can find the podcasts at THSPod on

(1:42:02) Al: tumblr and on bluesky. You can however send us feedback also on our website harvestseason.club

(1:42:10) Al: where you can also find links to everything to do with the podcast including our patreon.com/thspod

(1:42:16) Al: where you can get access to our slack and chat about things. There’s been lots of fun conversation

(1:42:22) Al: this week about

(1:42:25) Al: Suguju Island.

(1:42:29) Al: And also get access to our bonus podcasts, where we just put one out of me and Kevin predicting

(1:42:37) Al: what will happen in Pokemon Day. The Pokemon Day presents. So come and listen to that before,

(1:42:42) Al: either come and listen to it before to see what we think, or come and listen to it afterwards

(1:42:46) Al: to see how wrong we were. And then hopefully, hopefully, next time.

(1:42:55) Al: We will be releasing reactions to that. I say hopefully because Pokemon Day is on the Thursday,

(1:43:00) Al: so that will be quite tight. But hopefully, we’ll manage to do that. I don’t often promise things.

(1:43:06) Al: I’m not promising, but I’m saying that I’m hoping this will happen. So we’ll see.

(1:43:13) Al: Yeah, I think that’s everything. Thank you, Micah, again for joining me.

(1:43:16) Micah: Thanks for having me

(1:43:18) Al: Thank you, listeners, for listening. And until next time, have a good harvest.

(1:43:21) Micah: Have a good harvest. Hey, we were pretty good that time we got there yay

(1:43:22) Theme Tune: The harvest season is created by Al McKinlay, with support from our patrons, including our

(1:43:34) Theme Tune: pro farmers, Kevin, Stuart and Alisa.

(1:43:38) Theme Tune: Our art is done by Micah the Brave, and our music is done by Nick Burgess.

(1:43:42) Theme Tune: Feel free to visit our website, harvestseason.club, for show notes and links to things we discussed

(1:43:48) Theme Tune: in this episode.

(1:43:52) Theme Tune: you

(1:44:00) Micah: I’m gonna do that again so that it sounds,

(1:44:03) Micah: I guess a little bit better than.

(1:44:10) Al: the highest quality possible so it can go into these you know people’s five quid headphones

(1:44:11) Micah: It’s trying.

(1:44:20) Al: or teni teni phone speakers