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Hello, and welcome to the Long and Short of It, the podcast where we discuss each of the games on the Open Critic Top 100 list.

My name's Lawrence and I'm joined by.

This is Dan, welcome to the podcast.

Welcome to the podcast, welcome back and welcome back to your good self who's now been marred with marriage.

And you are returned from the Far East from your honeymoon after a few weeks away, aren't you?

Yes, yes, I've within that time, 3 weeks, I've gotten married.

You, you were present.

I was and we spent a lovely few days in the lake.

Yes.

And then I was.

Then I flew off to Japan on a, on a very long flight and had an amazing time.

Yes, really great.

Three weeks, I would say.

I'm probably not the most emphatic person in the world, but yeah, it was brilliant.

It was, it was so good.

We'll struggle to top it, I think, in my life, but yeah, it was great.

Brilliant.

Well, you don't need to top it again unless you anticipate anticipate getting married again, and I don't think you are, so it should be.

Fine, that's not on the cards at the moment.

No, it was, it was good.

It was a very, very you wedding.

And yeah, I think everyone had a really nice time.

The venue was awesome.

And yeah, obviously you spent a couple of weeks in in Japen and I was, I was thinking about it earlier when I said we're going to record today.

I was like, what's my, what's my favourite moment of the entire wedding?

I don't know if you've got the photo.

Have you got the photos back for the photography yet?

I'm speaking to him on Monday, so I imagine that I'll have them next week.

So it was, I think it was just after you cut the cake and going back down to like there was a like a little, I don't even know what you'd call it.

It's not like a Hut.

It's kind of like a little scout huts like hall thing where the, the actual ceremony took place in the, the after party, etcetera.

And it was kind of late afternoon and right, everyone come back down.

We're going to do, do speeches.

And then you and me walked down to the to the thing, and the photographer was taking pictures.

He was like, dad, I think you might need to go back up because I think you're supposed to walk down with your wife.

And you're all right.

OK.

Yeah, he said that to me a few times over the course of the over the course of the day.

But then every time, every time I went to Becca, she was like, she's like, oh, no, you don't need to walk me to places.

But I thought I bet better do it.

Better do.

It chaperone.

Yeah.

Wedding chaperone.

But no, it was, it was a it was a good day and hopefully you're back and feeling refreshed.

I'm jet lagged so today is my first day back in work and I felt it.

But I'm better than I was yesterday so give me a few more days.

But I'm in good spirits and that's the most important.

Thing that is the most important thing with a with a a new nice piece of jewellery around your finger, yes, which has.

Been sent back because it's too big so I'm getting it sized.

Did did did you get it originally sized before you lost all that weight?

Yes, So great size before I lost the weight.

And then not, not that I was ginormous, but yeah, I lost some weight for the wedding.

And I also when I was in Japan and it it was loose.

So Becca said, oh, just put it on your middle finger.

So I put it on my middle finger and it got stuck on my middle finger.

So we were moving between cable cars, quite literally on a mountain, and I was struggling to get the ring off my middle finger and.

I think kind of just with it.

Yeah, so that was fun.

And then my, my, my finger was going purple, so that was great.

Oh.

Fantastic.

That's good.

Wow, that's a memory for you.

The medical malady in Japan.

Yeah, yeah.

Fantastic.

Well we are we are back to it after a a tumultuous couple of weeks with with everything going on.

You've obviously been got married, been on a honeymoon, I've been at work so there's that I suppose.

But it's my last day with my current job tomorrow, OK, before I move on to past years new.

But we are here as we often are well met to discuss a game.

And a game that we are going to be discussing today is it was a bit of a rogue one that you told me about.

Yeah, bloody ages ago.

Now I hadn't heard of it before.

But today we're going to be talking about a game called Slay the Princess.

So Slay the Princess is a game developed by a company called Black Tabby Games and was originally released in October 2023 primarily on PC.

But then I think later they released it on consoles and other gubbins after that Tabagotchi.

But yeah, so Furbies.

Yeah, play it on your calculator.

Yeah, but it came out with an open critic score of 90 and it comes in on our list at position number 83.

OK, so initially tell me about your history of this game, what you knew about it, if anything, and where you played it please.

Nothing.

I knew nothing about this.

I was scrolling through the list.

Sometimes I go back to the list and I just like to see what changes have been going on.

And I find with the open critic list, it changes more frequently than the Metacritic list did.

So yeah, it seems interesting.

Yeah, every month or so just to go back in and see what couple of new games are on there.

It's quite a dynamic list.

So I, I had a look through and I was looking for a short game for us to play because Hollow Knight turned out to be a much longer game than I think either of us anticipated.

So what I was doing was just going backwards and forwards between the list and howlongtobeat.com to just check the length of these games.

And I checked this one and it turned out to be quite short.

Looked into it a little bit and it looked quite interesting.

An adventure sort of horror narrative game.

So I thought, why not?

So yeah, we we've decided to do it.

I played this.

There's a version on the the Switch called Slay the Princess, Pristine Cuts, I think it's called.

Yeah.

So I played that version, yes.

Where did you play this game?

And as you've already alluded to, no prion.

Yeah, never bloody heard of it, heard of it before, had no idea what it was.

But yeah, I you told me about it.

So I was like OK, sounds interesting.

Still had no concept of what it was until I looked it up and saw kind of what kind of game it is.

And I describe it as like a, you remember the old Goosebumps books, like Choose Your Own Adventure, a little bit like that.

But yeah, I started playing this on the Xbox because it's a little bit cheaper than playing it on Switch.

However, I then about a week or so ago, upgraded and did the thing that I'm very good at doing, which is wasting money.

And I purchased myself a gaming PC.

Long time listeners of the PC may remember.

Listeners of the PC listeners of the podcast may remember.

Probably about a year and a half ago, I actually bought a gaming laptop, but I then ended up selling it about six months later.

I just didn't really like it.

But I've given myself a proper setup.

So I started playing it on the Xbox and then finished it on my gaming PC over the Halloween weekend.

So yeah, it was my first game, I suppose if you want to call it that's on the new on the new rig, playing that alongside a demo called called Half Sword.

But yeah, it was it's certainly an interesting game.

So do you want to tell us what this game is about and what what it is?

Because we mentioned it's kind of like a narrative driven game, a bit like a choose your own adventure.

But what is Slay the Princess?

Yes, so.

Basically, you've got different scenes and it's it's a, it's a spin on the old, the age-old formula of saving the Princess.

And we've, we've also played another game in the Metacritic list, which was a bit of a spin on that, which was the name's not going to come to me now, the game where you turn out to be the person who stole the Princess.

And it's that puzzle game.

And I can't think for the life of me what it's called.

All right.

I completely lost your audio again.

Oh no.

Right.

Do you want to start again from talk about what it is?

Because I didn't stop recording.

Yes.

So before before I do that, what was that game called the the other game where?

The Stanley Parable.

No, no, the the puzzle game where you ended up being the person who was the monster who stole the Princess.

Oh, Braid.

Yes, that's the one.

All right, So, yeah, so slay the Princess is a bit of a spin on the old formula of saving the Princess, obviously going back to the Mario days and and the age-old sort of a fairy tale formula.

And we've played another game in the in the Metacritic podcast called Braid, where you turn out to be the person who kidnapped the Princess.

But in this game, you are there to slay the Princess.

And you're right, it's sort of like a Goosebumps choose your own adventure.

And upon starting the game, you are greeted with the narrator and he talks to you in the second person, says you are doing this, you are doing that.

And you come upon a cabin.

And inside the cabin in the basement is a Princess.

And basically you're having conversations with the narrator, with voices in your own head, with the Princess herself, and you're making decisions about the fates of the Princess and the fate of the world.

Because you're told by the narrator that if you don't slay the Princess, it will mean the inevitable doom of the entire world.

And then there's a bit of a cycle going on.

So you go through this story, which is.

3 chapters per run on there it's.

Yeah.

Multiple times you run through the game.

Yeah, and it and it is.

It's almost like a visual novel in a way, except that you do make those decisions along the way.

And yeah, you, you repeat this cycle five times until you get to the credits and you're making different decisions on each playthrough.

And it's sort of has each each time you play, it has repercussions in the following playthrough, but it's also a bit like Groundhog Day in that you're replaying a scenario that you are very familiar with by the 5th time you've played through it.

But there are multiple ways and multiple choices you can make.

And one run of five playthroughs won't have you seen them all?

I think there's 20 or 30 odd overall or something like that.

So you're the outcomes that you had will probably have been different to the ones that I had.

It's not an easy game to describe when I when I try to vocalise what it is, because it, it really is quite unique, isn't it, for this list?

Yeah, it's, I mentioned to you just now that it kind of gave me vibes of The Stanley Parable when we played that a while ago, which was a game that I really enjoyed.

But yeah, Slay the Princess is like you say, it's very much the case of your playthroughs will be very different from my own.

And as you progress, you see that the decisions that you make or the options that you choose will then vastly change what kind of Princess that you're dealing with, what her personality is and how she talks to you.

Like the biggest change that I saw was at the start of every run, you start off outside a cabin, you walk up to the cabin and then before you go downstairs, you have the, which is where the Princess is.

You have the choice of picking up a dagger or not.

And my first playthrough, I went in with the mentality of I'm not going to kill the Princess, which led to the I think it's all like the happily ever, happily ever after ending where you go outside under the stars and you dance with each other.

And that's, I think clusters like the happy ending.

I was like, OK, interesting.

So I did that.

So I never actually got that one, even though I left the dagger.

And oh, really?

Yeah, no, I didn't get that one.

So yeah, you, you have dinner with her in this big castle and yeah, you escape and then dance with each other under the stars.

But then the second time that I was like, OK, I've done that run now, so let's start again.

I went down to the basement, but this time I took the dagger with me, but still with the mentality that I wasn't going to kill her.

And her voice and her personality is completely different just by the choice of taking the dagger with you.

And it really threw me.

And it was at that point where you can't do the same run twice, it stops you from doing it.

So I did it where I was like, OK, so I've taken the dagger down with me, but I'm not going to kill her this time.

However, when you try to set her free, she like chews off her own arm.

And you then like, OK, let's get out of here.

But then the narrator's like, no, you're not doing this.

And you have like 17 options of slay the Princess, slay the Princess, slay the Princess, or the other one is like, yeah, warn the Princess.

However, that option, that time was completely blacked out for me.

So I couldn't I couldn't do it.

And she went from being the Princess who I was trying to warn and trying to get away with despite me having the dagger with me this time, to then for the following two, like, continuations of that second run.

Yeah.

She became like this demon that looked like a corpse and was like, haunting you and became like this soul sucking demon thing.

Like, it was quite freaky.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a horror.

Name.

Yeah, it is a horror love story.

That's how they describe it.

It's like a psychological horror.

Yeah, and, and I'll be honest, like the overall theme of like not even the theme, the story of it.

Like when I got to the end, I didn't really fully get it because it is quite complex.

It's very much a case of this scenario that you're in is everything.

This is the entire world.

And we have the option of ending the world or keeping things running as they are and choosing love.

It was really bizarre and I I don't really know what I took away from it.

Do you have any insight?

Yeah, so, so before before we get there, I think a good so each so every time you you go to the cabin, you go to the basement, you.

You finish a continuation.

Yeah.

So you finish a continuation and there are three, there are three of those and that makes up one run.

And then you do this five times in order to get to the ending.

And as you say at the end, you make a decision, so.

It's kind of like talking to to Flowery, the flower from Undertale, isn't it?

Like the the all seeing?

Yeah, like creation or the creature at the end.

Yeah, and and spoilers for the game.

Yeah, essentially what is happening is that the Princess is the God of death, or not necessarily death, as in, oh, she's she's Death itself and she's the Grim Reaper.

The Grim Reaper.

But she, she is the goddess of the concept of death.

So what the narrator stands for is, is he wants to eliminate the concept of death, and he wants people to live forever and without the pain and the suffering of death.

Yeah.

And that's what he's talking about when he's talking about.

Good and the world.

Yeah, saving the world.

And by slaying the Princess, you can save the world, which is very, very enigmatic until the final sort of part of the game.

What he means by If you don't slay the Princess, the world will die and you'll doom everyone.

And each time you do a continuation, you doom a world.

And each time you start a new continuation, it's in a new world and you've doomed that previous world.

So the decision you've got to make at the end is, do you maintain the status quo, which is keep a world where death is a concept and you have living and you have dying, You have all the pain that goes with it, or you eliminate that and all you've got is life, for better or worse.

Or the third option is that you run away with the Princess and you basically shake off your responsibilities.

And I don't, I don't quite know what the repercussions of that are, but you, you disregard what fate has in store for you because it turns out that you are part of the Princess.

You are.

Yeah.

A piece of her.

Which was created by the narrator to slay the Princess.

So there's definitely some some strands here that are quite metaphorical in a way.

And there there are also elements that you won't necessarily understand even on a complete playthrough, because it may be that they they were part of another playthrough, or another set of endings, or.

So you won't necessarily understand everything, but I will say that the big takeaway for me, I really like this, this thought of if you could eliminate death as a concept, would you do it?

And I, it seems like a really simple realisation, but I mean, I feel like I'm on a journey to, to discover what life is about and, and the meaning of life and, and why we are here.

And I feel like everyone's sort of on that journey.

And sometimes it's a sort of external question that you are, sometimes it's an internal thing that you have to kind of come to terms with yourself.

And I, I kind of this, this question of if you could eliminate the concept of death, would you do It kind of hit me hard.

And it was like, no, we, we need death.

We need that finality, that, that suffering to really appreciate life.

Without that, life becomes meaningless.

And we need that ultimate end in order to have everything else because that's where the value comes from.

And that I found, I found it quite poignant really, and impactful.

And in my playthrough, I actually ran away with the Princess and we kind of just showed our responsibilities.

And I'm sure that a lot of people do do that because you're either maintaining the status quo, you're doing a Guy Fawkes and destroying everything, or you are.

A child and say I don't want to play, I'm running.

Yeah, yeah, basically that's where it is.

And because it's a game, you kind of want to defy the rules and you, you want to say, I don't want to play, I don't want to take one of the binary options, I'm going to do something else.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Like the decisions that you make in a game are very different to the ones that you'd make in real life.

Like on my first playthrough I went down into the basement without the dagger because I was like well I want to see where this goes and also.

I want to push the game to its limits because I know it's a game.

Yeah.

And it's what you do in The Stanley Parable, isn't it?

It's the Stanley Parable is very much a case of within the 1st 2 minutes, you get to a point, it's like Stanley went through the door on the left, and then you choose to go through the door on the right.

And then the rest is like, no, no, we're doing this again.

Stanley went through the door on the left and you continue to push it.

And I think that I'd be interested to see that there's no such poll that exists.

And maybe it's a poll I can put if, if, if anyone listening to this listens on Spotify, there is the ability to do like a poll at the bottom.

And I might put a poll on this episode to run for a few weeks.

But whenever I play a game and like Red Dead Redemption 2 is a fantastic example of this.

You have the opportunity in a lot of games to play as the good person to some extent or the bad person.

Paragon Renegade in Mass Effect.

Yeah, and the, the, the, the bad, the bad ending or the bad person.

Like, I mean, we've talked about Red Dead Redemption 2 at length.

I think it's probably we, we split that episode into two parts.

That's a that's a really big episode and the bad ending to that game.

And again, anyone that wants to play Red Dead 2 that hasn't.

Spoilers now, but yeah, the the bad ending in Red Dead Redemption 2 is OK.

You have two options.

Do you want to help save John and his family, or do you want to go back down to the camp and steal the money?

And it's like, well, Arthur's absolutely riddled at this point by tuberculosis and he's about to die.

It's very clear.

So it's like, well, why would you take that ending?

Because that's clearly not the ending that the the devs want you to take.

They want you to help John survive and have your moment dying on top of the the Cliff with the with the sunrise.

If you played the game like with good karma.

And I think that a lot of people would play games in that ilk, IE I'm going to play this the good way.

Yeah, I might be wrong and I will put no egg in the Spotify episode.

I'm sure, I'm sure there's been polls on, on websites that I've looked at before and it's something ridiculous like 75 to 80% of people will choose the good storyline.

And, and I think I've said before, in games where there is a like a binary choice between good and bad, sometimes I'll do the good ending and I'll say to myself, oh, I'll do the bad ending next time and.

Get to it comes to it I want to do.

That Yeah.

And I remember we talked about this in the Metal Gear Solid episode of the one where you let Meryl die.

I hate doing it.

It just doesn't feel right.

And I always do it because I want the stealth suit.

Yeah, I've done it a few times, but I don't like doing it.

Because it feels like it's the wrong choice.

Yeah.

And also to get that ending, you have to give up on the torture.

And it feels like you've actually done something wrong and you're getting punished for it.

And the punishment is that Meryl dies.

So it's, it's one of those things, even when I set myself the task, I will occasionally on some games do the bad side of things or I'll sort of toe the line a bit and I'll, I'll do a bit of both, which I do tend to do more these days, but I'm not always comfortable.

I don't know if that's the right word, taking the completely bad side.

And I don't know why that is.

And, and obviously I'm not alone in that, that thought process.

Now games are a forum where we can, we can live out that side of things and there are no repercussions.

And this game is a good example of that.

And actually the the decisions it presents to you, it encourages you to actually deviate from authorial intention and what the narrator wants, because the narrator tells you to do something, but from step, from moment one, he never explains why he wants you to.

You're here to slay the Princess.

OK, Why?

I was like, well, you don't need to worry about that.

You just need to do it.

Otherwise, the world's going to end.

And I think for most players that would bother them that.

That's why I went down initially.

I was like, well, no, I'm going to hear her out.

Exactly.

We've all played enough games to know when we're being duped as the player, and gaming is such a funny medium.

And we talked about this again in the Bioshock episode.

We there is what we want to do, but what the game allows us to do.

So there is no way to complete Bioshock without killing Andrew Ryan.

And we are following the path that the game sets out for us and we have to do it.

That is the only path forward.

And it's an interesting thing in games where what we as people want to do doesn't always go in line with the choices that we have.

And it's different from other media in that way.

We're kind of playing out a story that we don't have entire control over.

So when the narrator presents this this choice for us, but doesn't explain why, I think it's natural for people to want to challenge that.

And if we can't challenge that, then I think that would bother a lot of people.

And so, so, so we go down this route and, and probably a lot of people don't say the Princess, but then the game forces you to replay and to replay and you get different choices and you have to make and at some point you're going to kill the Princess inevitably to get those different choices.

So it's an interesting conundrum.

And I think your parallel to the Stanley Parable is, is a good one as well, because we do like to push those boundaries.

One of the things that I always do in games, it's like testing where the invisible walls are or an open world game, seeing where the edges.

It's seeing how far you can push a game like, and it's like that thing in Breath of the Wild, seeing how you can, you can do the shrines in different ways to the ways that were extended and, and that's a brilliant feeling to to come up with your own inventive ways to do things.

So we as people don't like to follow the beaten track and.

No.

This is a this is a game that really plays to that.

Well, it's the it's, it, it goes all the way back to the thing that people always analyse, isn't it?

Whether or not you believe in the Bible or whatever, but it's the the Adam and Eve story, isn't it?

It's like, right, you've got absolutely everything that you need here.

You don't need to worry about anything.

The one thing that I don't want you to do, see that apple tree over there?

Just just don't, don't mess with that apple tree.

It's don't have an apple.

And then what is snake, isn't it?

The snake says to, is it?

Eve says to Eve, yeah, you should have have that apple looks good, doesn't it?

And then she does it and it's like, right, you did the one thing I told you not to do.

You didn't need to.

You got absolutely everything you need to now get out my garden.

You're out.

And it's human nature, isn't It's curiosity.

Yeah, do mean humanity by, and it is.

I mean, that's another good parallel, the story of Adam and Eve and that single choice that you make that dooms humanity.

Thanks Eve.

Yeah, exactly.

And, and it is, it's, it's that curiosity that the poisoned apple.

And then, yeah, it, it's interesting.

And, and I, I kind of appreciate this game more because of it.

I think what this game is trying to do and what it says is more than the sum of its parts.

Like when you're playing this game, it won't necessarily feel that profound, but when you go away and think about it, I found it had quite a decent impact on me.

And I've definitely taken stuff away from it, which is more than I can say for a lot of games on these lists.

So yeah, good stuff.

So there isn't really a game players king section here because it is very much make a choice and then you'll go along with it.

And we've talked a lot.

Basically what I'm going to do is I'm going to jump straight to Question of the Week.

But what I think is interesting is we've talked the last two games that we've talked about on this list have been walking Sims.

Obviously we've played What Remains of Edith Finch and then we played what was the other one.

Dear Ester.

Dear Ester.

And we made the comment in Dear Esther that it is a it's an experience.

It isn't a video game, really.

Yeah.

With Edith Finch is a little bit more like a game.

There are more game like elements to it.

So the question of the week this week is, do you think that Slow the Princess is a game or not?

Because I think, I think you might have used the term earlier, but I think that it's something else very much akin to a game that we played a while ago.

I think it's more of a game than the two quote unquote walking simulators.

And the reason I think it is, is because it's so gamey and the message it's trying to deliver is through the form of games.

And it's like without a knowledge of games, this narrative wouldn't work because you are pushing the boundaries.

But the game knows you're going to do that and it knows the decisions you're going to take and it's all pre calculated.

It it wouldn't work if it was anything but a game or a choose your own adventure, it could possibly work, but then it would have to keep track of all those decisions.

It works because it's a game.

So yeah, I I think more so than those where linearity is the course of the day in those two games here it you are to a degree free to make your decisions within the parameters set by the developers.

So it really pushes that medium of games, even if there isn't gameplay as such.

The gameplay is press A to make a decision and that's it.

Yeah.

So what?

What's the game that you think it's like that we've played?

Yeah, So I I disagree.

I think this is less gamey than the other two.

And even though this has slightly more kind of involvement is a game I'm thinking of, the game it makes me think of is The House in Fetter Morgana, which is like a it effects like a digital novel really, isn't it?

Yeah, that's a visual novel.

Visual novel, that's the game, the term and the house from memory.

It's been so long since we played that game.

But I don't think that is a that's just a read along, isn't it?

You're not really making choices in that game from what I recall.

No.

So you do have odd choices that you can make and it will lead to different endings, but they are few and far between.

And overall there is there is a dedicated ending that most people are going to work towards.

There are quote unquote bad endings where you don't see the full thing.

But if you want to see the full story, you'll get to the final ending.

So yeah, there are decisions in there, but I mean, you may be looking at one decision every five hours or something.

So yeah, that is a visual novel through and through.

Yes, it 100% and I don't think that Slay the Princess is in the same vein as House in Fatima Organa, but I think there are quite a lot of similarities about it because it is very much make a decision and it will impact what you do.

I don't think there's gameplay to this game, but I wouldn't go as far as to just say, well, it's an experience because that's what I said about Dear Ester, and I think Dear Ester has more gameplay elements to it than what Say the Princess does.

It's.

More immediate in that you're controlling a camera and yes, you're moving.

However, in terms of the impact that you have over the story, you obviously have more impact in, say, the Princess.

It all comes down to how you define the gaminess of a game.

And it's an interesting exploration that we've been on in the last couple of months with the games that we've played.

And as you know, my, my thought is always does it?

Does it matter either way?

It's an experience of some form.

And if you get something out of it, you get something out of it.

And if you don't, you don't like that's.

That's it.

Yeah.

So yeah, I think it's been an interesting exploration.

And we've not planned this, but we just happen to play this kind of cycle of games.

Yeah, it's, I think it's we're looking for games that are slightly easier to jump in and out of with how how crazy timelines are at the moment with with the wedding and everything and all of that stuff.

So it I'm glad that we've played these games where we have though like kind of together.

So let let's touch on the visual and then the sound of this game.

So the the visuals of this game, they, they change a bit throughout the game depending on the decisions that you make.

And occasionally the Princess will seem a lot more jagged and insane.

And another time she'll look like a innocent, wholesome Princess.

But what?

What do you think about the look and the graphics of this game?

I really like the look of this game.

It's it's unique.

It's one of those games where you look at a steal from it and you know what it is?

I also like the fact that there is some movement in the in the in the backgrounds and it's not completely static.

Yeah, I really like the look of it.

And it's not full of colour.

It's it's black and white for the most part.

And yeah, it just, it just is unique and that goes a long way in my book in terms of the the sound and the voice work.

I think you can tell that the the male actor here is doing a lot of the voices himself, and there's not a lot of variation in that.

And then you've got the actress who plays the Princess, I think.

I think the voice acting is good.

Yeah.

I just find that they've not masked the fact that it's the single person doing a lot of the male voices.

Maybe that's by design though, so I don't know.

Yeah, I to be honest with you, I didn't notice that as much.

But now that you say it, yes, 100% that that that that's the case.

I mean, I'm, I'm with you.

I think that the the the design of the graphics of this game very much suited to what the game is.

It, it fits well.

But the one thing that I will say, the voice acting is great, but I really like the music in this game.

I think the music in this game is really well suited to the situations and scenarios that you find yourself in.

And particularly the music that is at the start of every run where you're in the in the forest heading up to the path and it's like a piano that plays.

I think it's really relaxing in the same kind of vein.

It's like Minecraft's piano music, maybe, Yeah.

But yeah, I, I think that the music and the visuals of this game really match up very well with what this this game is trying to do and what this game is.

So what do you reckon then?

This comes in with a score of 90 and it comes in at, I can't remember what I said.

It's like 82 or 83 on the list.

Do you think that it deserves its spots in the open critic list?

Before we get there, I'm going to ask you a question.

Given that it's just gone Halloween a week ago and this is a horror love story, what?

What do you think of the horror horror elements of this game?

Did did it get you at all?

How's it compared to other horror experiences?

Well, last.

Year we did Mortuary assistant, didn't we?

And then in years before that we've done primarily Resident Evil games.

I think we did Silent Hill two in there at some point as well.

I I didn't find this game scary.

I'd like when you said this game has got horror elements to it.

I was like, OK, cool.

This is before I played it and like it's the second or third run, I think where she turns into a demon.

I was like, OK, that's quite freaky, but nothing to the point where I was like, I'm bothered by that.

It's very much psychological horror.

Like I said earlier, it isn't kind of, yeah.

I mean, the the demon ending was the scariest that it got.

However, like there was one where she turns into a witch, which I thought was fine there.

The thing is, I don't think that the devs are trying to scare you with this game.

They say it's a horror love story, but the horror is very tame.

I don't think there's anything that's going to scare people with this game unless you Jesus Christ, that will scare me.

Then when my Alexa goes off behind me when I'm talking about horror games, Jesus Christ, stop listening to me, you creep.

But yeah, I am I, I don't think that it's very horror esque.

It's got a couple of creepy elements to it, but yeah.

I think it could creep out kids if kids played it.

I think some of the imagery's quite dark.

It's quite gruesome as well.

There were like the bits where she's chewing her arm off.

It's unpleasant, and unpleasant is a good word for it.

Like when you see even the visuals of the text as in the font, it changes depending on the playthrough that you're on.

So the more wicked or evil she is, you get red text and it looks all distorted and the visuals get more and more grotesque and her voice as well changes.

So I think there are definitely like I was, I was playing this, I was playing it in a monastery in which I stayed overnight and in Japan.

And Becca came in and saw that I was playing it and I thought she's going to think what, on what on earth is he playing?

So I think you feel she's.

Passed that, now she knows you well enough to know that you're weird anyway, so you're fine.

Yeah, yeah.

But but I thought, I thought she, she might be thinking why is he playing that?

Like we're on our honeymoon?

Why is he playing that game and stop playing games.

Well, well, yeah, I was going to play games anyway, but yeah, so I think it's definitely there.

But I also agree this is not the sort of horror that kind of lingers on your mind.

Like, once you put the game down, it's gone.

And I think that very initial sort of creepiness doesn't last on subsequent playthroughs because you kind of get to the point where you know what the game is doing and it's like, OK, it's just a different spin on it.

But yeah, I wanted to talk about it, given that we've not had a dedicated horror game for Halloween, so.

We would have done, but we we struggled.

Well, it was primarily my schedule.

We struggled to to record this before you went away.

Otherwise this would have been out for Halloween.

But nevermind, better late than never.

Yes.

So what do you recommend?

Do you reckon that the the game deserves to be in the top 100 list?

To my surprise, I do.

I wouldn't have thought that whilst playing it.

Certainly initially I don't think I was particularly wowed by this game.

But I think the more I played it and I got what it was doing and the way it's putting a spin on things that and questioning some of the some of the foundations that that we've come to know with games, I think it's interesting and it's different.

And I would take that over sort of many other games that are on these lists and add in the fact that it it does have this message of actually death is an important concept and we need death to value life, which sounds so counterintuitive.

And I think as you get older, you appreciate that a bit more than you do.

So that that message, I don't, I don't know why.

I think it was the way that it was presented and the way that it ruminates on that idea.

And it doesn't necessarily answer it straight out.

It just leaves you to think about it.

I think the way it delivered that was quite impactful.

And then you take into account that this is not linear storytelling.

You're, you're cycling, you're doing these cycles of, of gameplay.

The decisions are changing all the time.

You're not seeing all of them in one playthrough.

And it's got these interesting visuals, interesting sound.

So yeah, I, I just appreciate it.

I may play it again at some point in the future.

I'm not in a rush to play it again, but I I value what it's doing.

So for that reason alone I'd say it does deserve to be here.

What about you?

I don't, I don't think so.

And I was thinking about this earlier today when we talk about do you think a game deserves to be in the top 100 or not?

And I don't feel bad when I say that a game doesn't deserve to be in there because like genuinely, some of the games that we've played have been crap.

But I think that there is, particularly in my head, it's kind of like a thing where it's like, if you say that it doesn't deserve to be here, does that mean that you don't think it's a good game?

Or do you not think that it's good enough?

And I don't think that this game deserves to be in the top 100 list.

But that doesn't mean to say that I don't think that this is a great game, because I think that it was really enjoyable and.

There's a lot of value in it.

Yeah.

And I'd recommend it to anyone that just listen to this and doesn't mind you about spoilers we've thrown you away.

But it is worth the experience because you'll get different endings to what me and Dan got.

So I'd say that no, it doesn't deserve to be here, but it's certainly worth a look.

And I thought that it was really good.

And I think it's averted my expectations because my expectations were, I don't know what the hell this is.

Yeah.

And I think it's going insane for me as well.

And it all comes down to we've, we've asked, we've, we've kind of ruminated on this idea of what it means to be in the top 100 games and how do you say whether a game deserves to be there or not.

And actually, I think the conclusion that we've sort of come to is that everyone's top 100 will be slightly different and the things that they value are going to be different anyway.

And for me, if, if you're doing something a bit different and you have a message and to me that is quite valuable.

And I would, I would place that in the top 100 compared to 4-5 GTA games or whatever.

But yeah, it's all down to the way you, you, you place value on things and, and everyone's way that they place value on things is going to be slightly different and that's OK.

And yeah, so, so basically I've eliminated the need for this podcast.

There you go, don't listen anymore.

Thanks.

But like I said, I will put in if I remember, I should remember to put in a poll if you listen on the Spotify app or on Spotify on your desktop or whatever, I'll put a poll in the like the info of this this episode about whether or not you you tend to have the, the good or the bad paths when you play games, because I'm genuinely interested to see what that looks like.

Good, bad or in between?

Good, bad or ugly, as Clint Eastwood would request.

But yeah, so that is slay the process.

So we, we've mentioned it a couple of times, but what are we doing next time please?

We're doing hollow night.

I've completed Hollow Night so yes, just waiting for you to give it.

Just waiting for me.

I dabble and yeah, I, I, I quite enjoyed it.

Spoilers for that episode.

I've played, played a couple of hours of it, yeah, but I'm not really a Metroidvania kind of guy.

But we'll see.

I'll play some more of it and we'll see what happens.

Yeah, I got into it.

It took me a while, but I got into a bit of a rhythm with it and I completed it.

And yeah, I, I, I, I get the appeal.

Not my favourite Metroidvania, but yes.

Maybe maybe the real Hollow night is the friends that we made along the way.

That's what we can take away from Hollow Night.

There you go.

Put us always.

You can find us on social media.

We're primarily on Instagram.

Or you can e-mail us at the long shortest podcast@hotmail.com.

And yeah, we hope that you've enjoyed this episode on say, the Princess.

Apologies that it's taken a bit longer, but you know, life saving Mr Blobby saving Mr Blobby from making the wrong decision down the aisle.

Bring back to his wedding first.

Went to his wedding first, I'll tell.

You.

So this is another thing.

Yeah.

At, at at the wedding.

You'll be happy to know, dear listener, for the wedding music on my playlist was Mr Blobby.

And we we both had a chuckle at that.

Everyone else thought we were a bit bit mental, but yeah, no one.

Knew no one knew what was going on.

The music started playing a Mr Blobby.

And then Dan just looked intensely at me from the other side of the room to see my reaction.

So yeah, good.

Good to know that Mister Bobby joined us.

We and we laughed as as as we do.

And the children cried and alas, I don't know.

So there you go.

That's really the highlight of the wedding.

Yeah, it wasn't our first dance, though.

Shocking pity.

Yes, quite.

But yes, we will see you.

Dance.

Wasn't your first dance a Kermit song?

It wasn't Kermit, it was it was Willie Nelson's Rainbow Collection.

It was.

But yeah, obviously originally.

Was your first dance a Kermit song?

Well, that is a blobby song.

Blobby song.

That's right.

Well, yes, on that bombshell of Blobby and Kermit, we will.

We'll see you next time for Hollow Night.

That's the great I want to see.

That is, maybe I'll do my Kermit impression next time.

We'll see what happens.

Do your blobby impression, please.

No, I can't do that.

It's too embarrassing, too humiliating.

But until this fun sounds into something completely ridiculous, we'll see you next time for Hollow Night.

In the meantime, take care, Cheerio.

See you on the next one.