Thank you for pressing start on episode 81 of Underplayed, Kzum's indie video game podcasts.

Today we have two secret games, followed by a review of our featured game Rogue Legacy.

Here on Underplayed, we review indie games of all kinds, the games with small budgets but big hearts, the lesser known experiences with imaginative ideas.

I'm Bo Po and I'm joined by another.

He got the platinum in going under.

It's one of his numerous claims to fame.

He's the OB to your IB in a cooperative game.

He runs like a pony.

He loves pepperoni.

It's the one and only Disco Cola.

What's going on?

It's great to be here with you.

SER Bopo, son of Queen Denise, the determined spell sword, grandson of Lady Leona the divine Arch mage, and great grandson of Etor the gallant Hokage.

Did you message someone in my family?

Indirectly I thought, you know you can get a lot of information from Googling people and somehow your family has that on lock, so I had to employ some help.

Did you go to ancestry.com and log in as me?

I'm doing just fine.

My big flaming ball with the same name as a Spanish conquistador.

Those are references to our featured game, Rogue Legacy, which is one of our oldest featured games of the season.

It might be the oldest featured game of the season.

I'd have to double check, but this game came out all the way back in 2013, twelve years ago.

Can you believe that?

It's just wild.

I, you know, I can.

Honestly, I thought it was a bit older.

Oh, and yes, it seems like by far this is our oldest one.

The next closest one might be Moonlighter.

Oh, Moonlighter.

Yeah, Which?

Is not that old really.

Yeah.

So it's good to go back and pick up a classic and play it.

And in my case, I'm replaying it for this episode.

I played it all the way back in December 2013.

Wow actually on Steam and I've replayed it on PlayStation 4 so.

Yeah, that it was pretty high on your list before, before this episode.

I'm curious to see where it where it sits later.

Disco after replaying the game will shift in the ranking.

OK.

So yes, it was previously one of my favorite game, I think in the top 10 on my top 100 indie games list.

And now that I've replayed it, I have some new thoughts on it.

A lot of the thoughts remain, but we'll get to that later.

And then also we want to talk about next episode a little bit.

Next episode, episode 82, we were going to have a very special guest.

We're going to have Kara from Patch Magazine, which is a monthly Zine devoted to indie games.

Kara's going to come on the show, talk to us about her gaming tastes, talk to us about Patch Magazine, and we're also going to review Blue Prince alongside Kara, which is super exciting.

That's the game that was picked from our lists of options, and we are both in the middle of playing Blueprints as well.

I have been playing the past like week really feverishly trying to discover stuff, and I'm looking forward to that so much.

So we like to let you know about the special guest appearances the episode before they happen, so stay tuned for that.

Also, another item of business is that we've been doing some collaborations and some appearances here and there.

Just wanted to give people the preview that I will be appearing on another gaming podcast called Tales from the Backlog, which is hosted by Dave Jackson.

Every episode he has a different guest on and he and the guest tackle a game from the backlog and then talk about it.

And the game that he and I are going to be talking about in a September episode is Pseudo Regalia, which you and I have talked about a little bit.

And I got to play that about a month or so ago.

We recorded the episode early and it is sitting in his back pocket.

It's going to release in late September.

So that means that I probably won't pick Pseudo Regalia as a secret game on our show, at least anytime soon.

I really think you should play this game.

OK.

So a little bit more inside baseball.

That was one of our options that we were looking at when we were on no small games together, right?

And we ultimately went with Haven, but I did play pseudo Regalia for a little bit to test it out and see.

And I I enjoyed what I played of it.

I still want to play on a different platform if that ever becomes a possibility, but I don't know that that will be the case.

So I do, I do want to play it.

It seems like a really fun game.

I'm actually kind of surprised it hasn't shown up on any new platforms.

I wouldn't lose all hope for that, but I hope it happens so that's it's more accessible to even more people.

I I really had a great time talking about it with Dave and we both spoilers.

We both enjoyed it, but a lot of it was so unlike what I expected.

I actually didn't have many exectations going in.

I just knew what the cover photo looked like.

I kind of knew what the character we play as looks like, and I knew generally that it was like a platform in 3D Metroidvania, but I knew nothing else about like the look, the style, the feel of the game.

So that's coming up.

I'll probably talk about that again when that episode is closer.

And then also we want to talk about some recent news that concerns public media and KZ Wham, which is where we produce this podcast.

There's been a lot of a lot of news disco that you and I have been looking out for and reacting to.

So what?

What's going on in the world?

So if you follow us on our social media platforms, we're on several of them, including Blue Sky, to a certain extent, Twitter, even Facebook and Instagram and Threads.

You probably saw our statement.

But essentially what happened was a few weeks back, as of this recording, the United States Legislature passed a rescission package that takes back two years of funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

And again, KSUM is a public broadcasting entity, so nonprofit, and some of our support does come from the CPB.

As a result, KZM will no longer have that funding.

And despite what Senator Schmidt of Missouri would suggest, among many other false assertions, this will affect the smallest stations the most, even though the target of this is PBS and NPR.

Those entities are going to survive.

They're going to be fine.

Most of their support comes from listeners.

And it's like less than 2% comes from the CPB.

Those, those entities are going to survive.

This is going to hurt small and especially rural stations significantly.

Senator Schmidt suggests that, you know, they will have access to other funding sources in those communities.

Yeah, but but what's that look like?

And simply will not be to the scale of what they were getting from the CPB.

That just doesn't exist, especially in these rural communities.

And so those smaller communities will be less safe by not having public broadcasting entities that are looking out for them.

Because a lot of commercial entities aren't looking out for them or are automated or are owned by conglomerates far, far away.

So this is affecting a lot of small stations a lot, and it's really disheartening to see this happen.

KZM will be fine, at least for the next couple of years.

We might have to downgrade a little bit in fiscal year 2027.

We don't know what that looks like yet.

So for now, Underplayed will will be around and as long as there is a production studio, Underplayed will still be here.

Underplayed isn't receiving any funding from KZM and so we're not being underfunded by CPB being.

Underfunded, we, it's, we're sort of detached by one level where we use the facilities and the equipment, but it's we're not putting money in our pocket to help pay for games exactly, for instance that we play.

Now that is to say that the possibility does exist that KZM will no longer be able to afford rent at this facility and may have to downgrade to a smaller facility, in which case we might lose access to a production studio, in which case we would have to re evaluate what underplayed looks like at that time.

And then and then as a result of this rescission package, the CPB has very recently as of this recording announced that they will just be ceasing operations altogether.

Yeah.

So that's so unfortunate.

It's decades of of legacy and educational support there.

Haven't they been around for like 60 years?

Yeah, it's horrible.

This is horrible.

It is and getting a a better administration unfortunately will not fix that because this entity is going away.

So in light of all this, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting closing down, which was responsible for giving funding to lots of local and small and rural stations, In light of all that, what do you tell people who rely on local stations?

What?

What is it is it's be more mindful about giving to your local station.

Is that all we can say right now?

That's really all you can do, maybe even volunteer your time if you have the means to do so for some of these smaller stations.

Like the battles already lost essentially.

That is so unfortunate.

Yeah.

We, we grieve for a lot of those smaller stations that won't survive this.

And it's basically a, a foregone conclusion that that will happen.

Yeah, it's just so unfortunate.

And you know, with that, we have a lot of gratitude that we live in the community that we live in and that KZM is receives a majority of its support from listeners.

And then they've got a really good underwriting director right now that is really good about building those relationships with businesses.

So KZM is going to survive for quite a while at least, but what it looks like with that funding hit, we just can't say for sure.

Yeah.

In the future, as things develop, if there are updates, we'll share those probably on social media and on our show, especially big impactful updates.

But for now, there is some hope in just being able to keep doing this for a while the way that we're doing it, and I feel at least thankful for that.

That's that's the silver lining.

We're, we're incredibly lucky.

It's, it's incredible that a community our size even has something like Kay's, UM, for as long as it has.

So we are very fortunate here and we wish the best for everybody that wasn't quite so fortunate.

Yeah.

Well, this is kind of a difficult topic to move on from, but we will move on now.

And before we do, there are a few very easy ways to support our show.

They cost nothing and they take almost no time at all.

We would really appreciate you doing these things for us if you haven't already.

One, give us a follow and a five star rating on podcast platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

If you're enjoying the show, that makes us appear more consistently for you and for others.

And two, you can follow us across social media using links in our show notes and lastly, sharing our podcast by reposting our stuff on social media and telling your indie game loving friends about us means the world.

And as always, we love you.

Thank you for listening.

We're going to move on now to our secret games.

In Secret Games, we're each going to reveal an indie game we've been playing recently and we're going to review it.

We don't talk about what games we're picking in advance, so I don't know what Disco Cola is going to review today.

He doesn't know what I'm going to review today.

It's just for fun.

Let's keep it a secret and reveal it right now.

So we'll start with you, Disco Cola.

Let the mystery be no more.

Reveal your secrets game for Episode 81 of Underplayed.

My Secret Game this episode comes from and I'm going to maybe ronounce this wrong Louis Rigo an it is called Iris and the Giants.

I'm familiar with this.

I know you've been streaming this.

You knew it was coming at some point, probably.

I figured actually maybe later in the season, I didn't know how long the game was.

It actually kind of seemed like a longer game.

So it was a longer game and I did have to finish it off stream, but I didn't play too much off.

Stream.

OK, I had no finger on the pulse of how far along you were.

I saw you streamed a few times but I had no idea like how close you were to finish it.

Really.

Either, to be honest.

I mean, I knew I knew the Giants on level 20, but that's about all I knew.

OK, so yeah, this came out a lot more recently than I realized.

This came out back in like March of 2023.

In Iris and the Giant, you play as Iris, and when the game begins, Iris is in the car with her dad reading a book of Greek mythology on the way to diving practice, and at diving practice, the narration implies that when it's her turn, she jumps to herself, imposed doom, and in the scene, clearly Iris is struggling with life.

When we take control, Iris is on the ferry with the ferryman, and the ferryman hands Iris a deck of cards and we set out to climb through the levels of the labyrinth to reach the giant.

Is it like Karen the Ferryman?

Really.

Well, I yeah, I think it's implied given the Greek mythology book.

Yes, I I would assume so, even though it's not explicitly mentioned.

I would believe that too.

And I've actually been thinking.

We've encountered Karen a lot in tons of games we've played.

Like I the other night I did a count and in all the games we've played I I could come up with at least like 4.

Wow, that's even more than I remember.

Yeah, OK.

It's.

Pretty wild.

Well, add this one to the list.

OK, will do.

Like a back lock?

There you go back.

Locked Karen appearance.

Karen Cameo.

Karen Cinematic.

Universe on our way.

On each floor we will face waves of different monsters.

Sometimes they're referred to as Quote My Demons, and we must use our cards to attack our demons to clear the path for progression.

Monsters will increase in number and variation the higher we climb.

As we defeat monsters in clear rooms, we will gain access to treasure chests or level up and gain access to passive abilities, cards, and just general permanent upgrades.

And as you play the game, you can also find what are called Memories, which will add back story to Iris.

As you complete certain challenges, you will also unlock Imaginary Friends, and Imaginary Friends will just add buffs as long as you have them equipped.

I should note that this game uses the exhaust method for cards.

If you're familiar with Slay the Spire, once you use the card once, it's gone.

So unless otherwise stated by another game rule, that card disappears as soon as you use it.

So as long as you keep your health up, keep your deck stocked, and learn the attack patterns for each monster, you'll be able to make your way to the Giant on the 20th floor.

OK, it's only 20 floors.

Only 20 floors, he says, but only 20.

But there's a big but.

There's there's a lot of different kinds of monsters, there's branching paths.

So that's pretty much it.

Do you have any questions before I move on to like what I what I jive with, what I don't?

I don't think so.

So well I guess so like roguelike deck builder would be the most accurate.

That's how I would describe it, yeah.

There's there's some meta progression too.

So you you get that a little bit and that does help you get a little bit further.

We love that.

Yes, we love that.

Yes, straight death.

Hang off a Cliff and start again.

Not always my jam.

OK, so for stuff that I like about Iris and the Giants, as is often the case, I bought the game for the art style.

I thought that this game was using an artistic direction I wasn't really seeing anywhere else.

I can't think of a game visually that it reminds me of, and I'm kind of into that.

It's very restrained and the number of colors it's using, but it uses them very cleverly.

Yeah, and it's there's not a lot of like geometric shapes going on.

It's it's very simple geometric shapes to the character designs, just hard bold lines, but then also watercolor backgrounds at times.

It's just a really fascinating art direction.

I like trying to think 3 moves ahead in this game.

It's like, how can I get the treasure chest that is 4 rows back taking the least amount of damage?

How can I prevent interacting with this large enemy that's moving its way forward?

Do I focus on this enemy with a lot of armor or spend those cards defeating three other smaller enemies?

So there's there's a lot of calculations going on each time you take your turn and it's it's it's a fun calculation most of the time.

So I really enjoyed that.

And then because of this, I get a lot out of the next thing I like about the game.

It just it has that one more try vibe that I love from rogue likes at times.

Just whenever I fail, as long as I felt like my last run was fair and I lost in a in a fairway, I'm like, OK, I'm ready to go again.

Let's go, cool.

Sometimes if I lose and what seems like an unfair way, I'll be like, all right, I'm time to put it.

I'm done with this for the day.

Oh, what were some of your play times for your sessions?

Were you playing for hours at a time?

Yeah, well, a lot of what I played was on stream, and so it's probably like 2 to 3 1/2 hours per session in most sessions.

I actually wrote down my PS-5 clock that it took me to beat this game, and I played it for 25 hours.

So I'm really happy that I started like in the middle of last season, knowing that eventually I would use this as a secret game.

There are multiple systems at work that will level up Iris during a run.

So one of them, you can collect these little red crystals on the ground, and after you collect so many, you'll level up.

Another way you level up is from defeating enemies, and then a third way is encountering and defeating boss monsters that might show up.

And there will be times where you'll be getting down to the wire.

You know your health's really low.

And you'll defeat a boss and maybe a couple of other smaller enemies.

And after that battle you'll level up from defeating the enemies.

And then there's some crystals on the ground that were behind them.

You get the crystals and you level up a second time.

And then you get the boss pick up because they they drop an item that you have to get to 1st.

And then you level up a third time.

And that's all within the span of like 5 seconds.

That's a really, really satisfying victory when those all sort of time out at the same time.

Occasionally this game will feature special puzzle challenges and I think you would love these.

These are really fun and I think they offer a fair chance to overcome them.

That being said, some of them seem to be literally impossible, at least for.

I was just like sitting there and looking at it over and over and I couldn't figure out what alternate order of operations I could have done to overcome this puzzle.

So when I get there and I can't figure it out, I feel dumb cuz I know that it made it so that it's possible.

I just can't.

I can't see the the light through the trees.

A.

Literally impossible challenge sitting in front of you.

That reminds me of Rogue Legacy in some parts.

And then lastly, I think the music is really good.

It's mostly subdued, but it's all really solid and I I wish it was a little bit easier to access because I want to give it a more dedicated listen, but I think the music's really good.

As far as things I don't like, a lot of my frustrations with this game can be boiled down to difficulty, and that kind of comes with the territory of a rogue light deck builder.

But it did get pretty difficult for me in a lot of different small ways and kind of resulted in that longer play time that I wasn't necessarily prepared to commit to when I first started it.

But like I said, I was very lucky that I started it last season because I I knew that the estimated time online was like a little bit lower than I was going to achieve.

But apart from general difficulty, if I drilled down on a few specific things first, I would say that enemies will sometimes have Shields, and they're especially problematic.

And it feels like it doesn't translate in functionality to how Iris's version of the shield works.

And it can really gum up the process if you don't happen to have just the right cards to deal with these Shields.

So you're learning about how your shield works and then it doesn't apply on the other side.

Yeah, they're.

Sort of misinformed.

Their Shields are way way way better than mine and it kind of sucks.

Related to that, kind of certain enemy types are a little too overpowered, especially for how you know early.

They appear on lower floors compared to enemies that come after.

I'm thinking of like the four sword cats and especially the anvil boars.

I don't know if they're boars or bats, but they're sitting on an anvil.

I think they are just like a little bit too overpowered for how early you encounter them.

And then I would point out that there are certain systems and behaviors that aren't necessarily explained as well as they could be.

Certain cards will maybe stun certain types of enemies, but not others.

And I don't always I won't always be sure which ones and why.

And then the one system I specifically struggled with in this game, you can complete a run.

By that I mean fail, and there's a chance that you'll start the next run under the sign of blank.

It might be the sign of the cat, or the sign of the boar, or the worst, in my opinion, the sign of the snake.

And when you get that, it doesn't really explain what this does or how long it lasts.

And in my case, I was having some of my worst runs ever in the sign of the snake, which seems to turn your Archers from cats into snakes and then snake type enemies reduce your maximum HP when they hit you, which can snowball really fast.

And I couldn't really figure out how to counter that.

And it seems to last multiple runs.

And then suddenly I started another run under the sign of the boar.

And once that happened, I basically made it to the end of the game 'cause I was no longer dealing with these like disproportionate number of snakes in my enemy pools.

So it seems to change enemy types, but it just, it doesn't explain what it's doing.

And you know, I didn't understand that.

But in addition to that, you don't seem to have any control over which sign you are put under and how to change it if you want to change it.

So it's just like, eventually you'll get lucky and it's like, all right, sign of the snakes done.

Now you're under the sign of the bore and that's that's just like luck.

And it can take multiple runs for that luck to show up, and that kind of sucks.

That's too bad that you can't at least pick from a small pool of them.

Like kind of like Rogue Legacy.

Give us three options maybe.

Yeah.

And then that way, if you know about the snake, you can avoid that one.

Hopefully it gives you two others.

Or at least like do something on a specific floor that allows that to show up at the end when you fail.

Like and maybe there is something like that and I but I don't, I don't know that I'm doing it when it happens.

Anyways, Iris and the Giant is an addictive and mostly fun game that is easy on the eyes of all times.

Getting snippets of Iris's history and having that act as a permanent upgrade in itself incentivizes me to seek out the story of this game, which I would otherwise maybe just passively read one time and move on.

I had an overall good time and would love to keep playing to complete my card collection.

Unfortunately, the game ended up being a much bigger undertaking than anticipated and is ultimately what is holding me back from finishing that collection, at least for now.

But that's not a small deal for me.

I'm ultimately positive on this game and I recommend it to anyone that likes unique art styles, deck builders, and has the time to commit.

So I give it an 8 point O out of 10.

Wonderful.

I have enjoyed seeing a few moments of this as you're streaming it.

And I'm wondering, you know, you mentioned the the Greek mythology book and how we sort of dive into this world on the way to swimming practice.

What is it?

Yeah, we're going to diving.

Practice diving.

Practice.

How much mythological inspiration are you noticing as you're going through?

Like, are you recognizing, oh, this creature is from this mythological story or are you versed in that stuff?

So I I know a good amount, you know, if you had grew up in the 90s, you had like this like boom of a lot of Greek mythological stuff like God of War and the movie Hercules and it seems like several games at the time.

And I had to study it in school.

I remember being in like middle high school and.

7th grade was the big Greek mythology.

Anyways, most of the enemy types seem to be some sort of Greek mythological creature.

You've got your cats and your snakes that are just cats and snakes it kind of seems like.

But there's Cyclops, there's Pandora's Box, there's Medusa, there's the Hydra.

So there's a lot that you encounter that is very clearly pulling from Greek mythology.

Nice.

And you mentioned the memories of Iris and how this sort of all stems from having a hard time.

And I understand that, you know, some of this might be spoiler ish to get into.

But what I've noticed recently is a lot of the most impactful stories that I've encountered in indie games have to do with children or young people dealing with a problem, maybe finding out who they are.

Maybe it's escaping a situation, maybe it's finding their way back to home or something like that.

So I think of games like the Wild at Heart and Spirit Fairer, Florence, Carto Miniatures, Mutacione.

Do you think that this game sort of enters that pantheon of touching games about younger people?

I think if you're the right person, I'm very fortunate that I didn't go through a lot of what Iris seems to have gone through.

But at the same time.

I feel like objectively it just doesn't focus a lot or enough on it to make make it quite as impactful as something like a mutatione.

It's like referencing things.

It's telling you things and it's not going terribly deep with.

It and and the construction of the world is obviously like an abstract, you know, formation that represents these hardships.

But like, you don't get to spend enough time in IRS's past.

To.

Like I think get quite to that level, if you're the right person, you might disagree with me and that's that's fine.

Yeah, I could see that.

I've.

I've played games like that where I could recognize that someone might really identify with this in a way that I can't just because I have a different life experience.

But I do recognize what it's telling me and some of the analogies it's drawing here.

Cool.

Well, where can you play Iris and the Giants?

Iris and the Giant is available on and there's a lot Linux, Mac, PC, Android which might be a great way to play this actually.

Xbox One, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch, PS4 which is the version I played, and PS-5.

Nice.

All right, it is time for my secret game.

My secret game is one that I've had on my list to play for a while, and there have been a couple seasons in the past where I thought, OK, this is the season I'm going to play it.

And then something else comes up.

Maybe it just doesn't feel like the right time.

Maybe I just am in the mood for something else and I finally played this game that I've been looking forward to for years.

My secret game is called Assemble with Care.

You ever wonder why we get so attached to things?

When you think about it, all this stuff we own is just screws and wires.

Except sometimes it isn't.

A whole life can be captured in the flash of a camera, wounds healed by picking up a phone.

Even the smallest object can hold the biggest meaning.

I have heard of this but I am not really familiar.

Oh, is this Wilmot Pax's bags?

I'm just going off with a.

Thumbnail you just sent me.

That's funny actually in the well there are two chapters where like you unpack and then pack a suitcase.

But no, it's not quite an inventory management.

It is a is a tinkering game about disassembling things, fixing them, and then reassembling them.

All right, cool.

So Assemble With Care is a 2020 puzzle narrative game.

It was developed and published by us two games.

The game synopsis from the Steam storefront reads quotes.

Repair old school objects in this cozy puzzle game.

Join antique restorer Maria as she arrives in the sun soaked town of Belleriva and sat out on a journey of helping the townsfolk reconnect.

End Quote.

So this game comes to us again from us two games.

They are the creators of the Monument Valley games, which I haven't played myself.

I've played the demo for the third one, actually, but those are games I want to play eventually as well.

So some people might have played the Monument Valley games, and I think they bring a lot of their sensibilities over to this game.

And you play as Maria, who is a young traveler and antique repair woman.

And back home, Maria's parents run an antique shop, and they wanted her to stay with them and help run the shop, but she has instead chosen to be on the road.

For a year she has been moving from city to city fixing people's broken things, as the game states everything from family heirlooms to VCRS.

So you can imagine she's quite handy, and she travels to the fictional Spanish town of Belleriva to sightsee and take a rest.

That's where this game begins, and the first level has you opening up her suitcase with your mouse if you're playing on PC, and clicking on objects to remove them.

And then throughout the next dozen chapters, you take in a very simple story of exploring Belleriva and meeting some of its inhabitants, some of whom need your help fixing things.

And these characters include a girl named Izzy and her dad Joseph, who have just lost the mother and the wife and their family.

There's Carmen, who owns a cafe, and her sister Helena, who have very different personalities.

And you fix things such as a cassette player, a statuette, a camera, a neon sign, a wristwatch, and so on.

Each level is focusing on one objects you're repairing, and then a little bit of story to go along with that object and the person whose object it is.

And so this takes place over 13 chapters.

There's also an epilogue, and it's a pretty short game.

This is a game you can finish in a few hours.

It kind of just sails right along.

You're repairing something, getting some story, then that's the end of that chapter.

I'm each chapter on average might be around 10 to 15 minutes.

So it does add up over time, giving you a nice pretty long sit of puzzles.

And what I liked about Assemble with Care is the visuals.

This game is full of bright and beautiful colors.

I love how this game looks when you're getting some of the bits of story you're getting these like painted scenes to go along with the words.

It feels like you're reading a storybook kind of, which is really cool.

But then also there are touches like backgrounds that have stop motion looping effects.

So while you're repairing something, there's just this nice touch of movement in the background to help bring the scene to life.

But then I also love the soundscape.

I think this has a masterful soundscape.

I love the diegetic sounds we hear.

Maria will talk about entering a shop in one of the narrative segments, and as she says that, you hear a little doorbell.

I can hear it in my head right now, Ding Ding Ling.

And it's just like little touches like that that coincide with what she's describing in her story.

And this game is voice acted.

And I love the voice acting all throughout.

I think these people sound super believable.

I also love the music by Thomas Williams.

Just a very peaceful soundtrack.

And 1:00, I'm going to go back and listen to for sure.

I also really like that the story is digestible, and we're getting the story between the gameplay moments for maybe just a few minutes.

But it really does add up to this feeling of community, this feeling of helping people, and it's very touching.

And I think this game highlights the importance of our things.

We recognize that things are temporary, like material possessions aren't the most important thing in the world, but this game reminds us that our things tell our stories.

They hold our memories, they remind us who we are, and I think that is a very powerful theme in this game.

It's kind of like unpacking in that way.

So I think if you like tinkering with things, if you like moving things and you like just sort of celebrating the objects and how they represent who we are, like in a game like unpacking, I think you'd love Assemble with Care.

I also really enjoy the tactility of working with these items.

When you're finally in puzzle mode and you're fixing something, it's almost like you're using this workspace.

And as you remove objects, maybe like a lid to a battery compartment, that lid goes off to the sides and these screws that you unscrew go in a little bowl.

But then also sometimes, like with this cassette player, you need to repair the cassette and the cassette player.

And so after repairing the cassette player, put that aside and you need to take the cassette and put it center stage and repair the tape that's in it.

So moving things around, it feels like you're actually messing with things.

It feels like you're tinkering all the time.

I like little movements too, like removing screws.

If you're playing this on PC, you just drag your mouse to the side and the screw just unscrews all the way and it just feels really nice.

You don't have to move your mouse a lot, but it feels like you're intentionally doing that action to perform that.

There are some things I didn't like as much.

Sometimes needing to put objects inside of other objects requires you to switch whatever's in your active spot in front of you.

So you can't just like, click and drag to rotate with any objects that's in your field of view.

You have to select which object needs to be the active one.

And sometimes it feels like you need to make a lot of selections to put the thing that goes inside of the bigger thing in the thing.

I I would get it mixed up a lot of the time.

Like I would have the cassette sitting in front of me and I'd have the player and I just drag the player over to the cassette.

Oh, that's the wrong way.

You have to do it the opposite way.

Does that kind of make sense?

And you can click and drag to rotate items, which is really cool.

Again, it feels like you're holding something and turning it with a lot of precision, and you can go like degree by degree, but sometimes it can feel a little bit slippery when you're rotating things.

Like you can click and drag to rotate something, but then it kind of keeps spinning a little bit and then it's a little bit too rotated the direction you wanted.

And there could be a sensitivity for this.

I didn't mess with anything like that.

And then the game is really brief.

The story is powerful, but none of the characters felt like they'll stay with me for a terribly long time, which might also be kind of the point of the game.

People come and go in our lives when we're in a new place.

So I kind of get that.

But I wanted even more from those side characters, like Izzy and her dad and the two sisters.

But overall, I think this is a great game that shows us how our things reflect who we are.

And you know, like an old objects, like a camera that is worthy of a second chance through being repaired, so too are we like the people who use those things.

This game kind of reminded me of that lesson.

I think it's relaxing.

It's very artfully crafted through its visuals and its sounds.

I wish we could spend even more time getting to know these people.

The journey is just really brief to the point where I don't think about it as much afterward as I was hoping to.

But I recommend this to pretty much everybody.

I think everyone should play this.

I rate this an 8.5 out of 10.

Heck yeah.

It's playable on PC, which is where I played it, Mac and iOS, and I actually think iOS would be an interesting platform to play this on, just like using your thumbs rather than a mouse.

I just didn't get to try it on a platform like that.

Cool.

Well, what I'm curious about is I'm I'm just looking at the trailer here.

As you're taking some of these things apart, are you learning anything about how their real life counterpart actually functions?

Like is there?

Are you like taking apart this record player and being like?

Oh, that's how that works, huh?

OK.

I would not trust this as like a 1 to 1 manual for how like a projector works.

But there are some basic like sort of rudimentary concepts that are communicated.

Like when you're repairing a, a slide projector, you have to guide, you have to install these mirrors and light will shine from an internal component onto the mirrors in a series of reflections out through the lens.

And so that's telling you that, oh, the, the general idea of a projector is that IT projects light that is then bounced in a couple of ways until it gets to the compartment that it needs to go out of.

So like there's that, but I wouldn't be able to take a broken projector and fix it before you, you know.

And so I think it does simplify things in a way that is really cool.

There's there's a watch with a lot of gears and the puzzle is just like what gears go in which slots.

There are lots of different sized gears.

I understand that a watch has gears in it already from just life, you know, that's sort of a thing that's known, but that one's more of a puzzle.

That one's more of let's find the gears and which spots they go into to make the right fit in this internal compartment.

So I'd say there's a little bit of teaching.

I guess I have some appreciation and understanding about some objects, but not in a way that makes me feel like terribly smarter.

OK, interesting note.

I'll ask you how how much did you get to play with cassette tapes when you were younger?

Because we're.

We're our age kind of like is definitely CD era, but some of us maybe especially if we were poor, had a lot of cassette tapes.

What's your experience with that?

My experience really is only limited to the fact that I had a Teddy Ruxpin.

Did you have one?

No.

I had a Teddy Ruxpin.

You're you're aware, I know of.

Teddy Ruxpin, I know what it is and it came back for a little while a couple years ago.

Oh, it is.

Yeah, I don't think it was cassette tape based, but there.

Was a Teddy Ruxpin toy well?

I used to put the cassette in his back, you know, and I forget what it did.

Did it sing or did it talk?

Something like that.

But that was more about the act of just like inserting something into a toy.

And that felt nice, like the, again, the tactility.

But I didn't play with cassettes.

I didn't like play music off of cassettes.

I think my parents had them.

By the time I was interacting with music on physical media, it was a lot of C DS.

Yeah, OK.

I just, I'm looking at this trailer again.

And something I learned as an adult is that you're most people like take a pencil to like rewind a cassette that became unwound.

Yeah, you stick it in one of the holes and you just.

Twist it like a wrench.

I just use my finger like I just went.

Maybe a little bit slower, but yeah, that never occurred to me and never even knew it was a thing until I was older.

Yeah.

That's that's just an anecdote that I like to talk about any time that comes.

Up Well, I think that does two things.

One is it shows sort of the ingenuity of using something like a pencil and the other thing is it commits to the style of I guess you never see your hands in this game.

Like in good point in the narrative bits where we're we see pictures of our main character Maria, like we see her hands there, but when we're doing the puzzles, it's not like she's picking up the things and you see her fingers.

You are clicking and dragging and the hand is invisible.

So I guess that's a way to get around that too.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And then you said these, this is from the same company that did the Monument Valleys.

Yes.

One of your complaints was that you want a little bit more time with these people.

Maybe you won't get more time with these people, but do you think they'll keep making a sample with care the same way they keep making Monument Valley?

I don't get the impression that that will happen.

I think this might be a one and done because this came out in 2020 and they've made 3 Monument Valley games.

I don't know when the first one came out, but Monument Valley 3 just released so I I could see them doing a third thing from here.

I don't know if they'll do Monument Valley 4.

I don't know enough about that to make a guess, but I would like to see what else they have up their sleeves.

Yeah, they've got a they've got a great art style on their shoulders.

Yeah, I think that's one of the strengths of their studio.

They're just very artful visually and I love the music and and soundscape here as well.

So those are our secret games.

Iris and the Giants and assemble with care.

We will move on to our review of Rogue Legacy.

It is our featured game.

So Rogue Legacy is a 2013 Rogue Lights developed and published by Cellar Door Games.

The game synopsis from the Steam storefront reads quotes.

Rogue Legacy is the genealogical Rogue Lights where anyone can be a hero.

Each time you die, your child will succeed you.

Every child is unique.

One child might be color blind, another might be a dwarf with Vertigo.

But that's OK, because no one is perfect.

You don't have to be to succeed.

Before we move on, can I ask 2 questions?

Sure.

Is this the genesis of the term Rogue like Rogue light?

Is it come from Rogue Legacy?

That is a good question, and I think we'll talk about this game's legacy later, but I think this is one of the earliest examples of a rogue light where it was very popular and inspirational.

And we should clarify, rogue like games are more hardcore.

Really the difference between rogue like and rogue light is how much meta progression is there.

That was my second question.

I never knew what the difference was.

That's.

The big one is rogue.

Light games tend to have more permanent upgrades and progression that helps you as you go along.

As you stray more toward the side of the spectrum where you're doing a fresh restart, more things are wiped.

You're not really getting that meta progression as much.

That's more on the rogue like size.

So I guess maybe the more specific question to my first point is, is there a game before this that has Rogue in its?

Title that would suggest it is coming from that game like the term rogue like and rogue light come from.

Rogue some something?

Yeah, a game called Rogue from forever ago.

Or, or is it?

I just don't understand the D&D class of rogue and I don't know what it means.

Oh well, the original I think the now.

I'm not a historian on this, but the original game Rogue came out decades ago.

I mean I this is a game from is it from the 80s?

There's AI didn't even know there was a game called Rogue.

Game Rogue is a dungeon crawling video game by Michael Toy and Glenn Wickman.

It was originally developped around 1980 for Unix based mini computer systems as a freely distributed executable.

Looks like this is an 80s game.

Early 80s.

I mean all games from the 80s have no meta progression.

And it led to the naming of the rogue like genre.

So that is the that's the history.

Interesting.

And I've sort of always known that, but I'm not aware of any games that were using Rogue in the title referencing back to Rogue like this.

But that doesn't mean there aren't any pre 2013.

There are a lot of video games in the world.

So I don't know.

But this is, I think, one of the first widely recognized ones.

And this is over a decade old now.

So it was really influential, I think, and just one of those early Rogue lights that was saying, hey, we're influenced by this classic game, but we're also adding in progression that is permanent.

And I think that's something we've seen a lot over the past decade and we continue to see.

So that sort of gets into the history and significance and one of the reasons why it was in our list of featured games.

But in this game, it's a 2D side scrolling game.

We start with text on screen that says, quote, my duties are to my family, but I am only loyal to myself, End Quote.

And so it's sort of this cold open where we play as this knight who approaches a king and slays him.

And all of this acts as the tutorial where we're learning about movement and how to attack things.

But you don't know why this is all happening.

You don't know who the king is, You don't know who you are.

And this kicks off a lineage where you then play as Sir Lee, who explores a castle trying to seek a big treasure.

And Sir Lee is not likely to make it through alive.

This castle likes to kill people, and his heirs carry the torch.

Each one with a different name, class, and set of traits.

And the goal is to explore this big castle with your lineage of adventurers, fighting its enemies along the way and making it further until you find a treasure or your purpose, or both.

Do you think that sounds fair?

The The story's pretty light in this game, but I'd say that the story is really like.

Bookended.

Yeah.

I really, you get like pieces here and there from somebody's point of view.

I don't remember who exactly, but but yeah, most of the story I got that I felt was necessary was at the end.

I was like, OK, got it.

Yeah, it's, and it's pretty straightforward by that point, but like we have that opening sequence, that's the tutorial area, if you will, and then a lot of gameplay in the middle and then the end.

And that's where we learn stuff.

So, yeah, how about what we do in that big middle section?

What's going on in that middle section?

For gameplay, yeah.

In Rogue Legacy you get most of the standard platforming affair.

Your most basic naked controls consist of a pretty solid default moving speed.

You also have a jump and a sword to swing, and you have a basic magic attack.

There are other moves you can do by purchasing them at the Manor.

You purchase stuff at the Manor using gold that you find on your runs.

And you you gain gold from felling enemies and destroying furniture and other fixtures like chandeliers and crates.

And this will be arguably one of the most important parts of the game.

It's just collecting a lot of gold.

Yeah, you want to get rich?

When you fall in runs, you will pick your offspring from a list of three, and these offspring will feature randomized traits, especially early on.

You mentioned some of them, you know, color blindness, coprolalia, hypochondria, gigantism, dwarfism, peripheral arterial disease, and several more.

And then these traits will become more common in lineage after they have been chosen for the first time.

You can also unlock new classes at the Manor such as Paladin, Hokage, Spellsword and Mage, and then you can also unlock upgraded versions of those classes.

You will also unlock at the Manor of Blacksmith and an Enchantress, and then from them you may purchase armor and mobility upgrades respectively.

After you have found the corresponding blueprints and runes on other runs and then the Enchantress specifically and her runes is where other inputs come in, you may be able to unlock extra jumps, dashes, and flight.

But I didn't mess with flight so I don't really know how that plays as far as input.

Yeah, that has to.

Well, I got flight through a special class that I unlocked in the manner, but I didn't like it, so I didn't play with that a ton.

But it is a thing.

You can fly in this game, you can do a lot.

All the different classes do different things.

They all have their specialties.

And then lastly for controls and inputs, upgraded versions of classes will have a special skill by pressing what is on PlayStation the triangle button.

One example is that the upgraded Barbarian class has a shout, and this shout will push enemies further back.

Yes, it says like Farro Deuce.

Yeah, it just says Skyrim.

Reference.

Yeah, and in some cases it will also delete projectiles.

That's pretty cool and helpful in very specific situations.

Other upgrades at the Manor include what you might expect, upgraded HPMP damage, carry weight for armor, and then other stuff you might not necessarily think of like increased money drops and decreased fee for Karen.

Appearing in two games today, I didn't think about that.

That's the theme.

Oh, that's why I was coming up with that list the other night, just because I saw playing this.

Yeah, because we were playing this.

Holy crap.

So.

Funny, I didn't even think about Karen Guest appeared on an episode of Underplayed.

Gosh.

Anyways, there's a lot at play in this game.

So this is like this is most of what to expect.

Is there something I'm forgetting as far as like controls, inputs?

Oh, I don't know.

There's a lot, a lot going on.

It's hard to cover everything.

But yeah, there are just tons of skills, traits, runes, things you can do with the Castle I.

Guess there's different kinds of platforms.

You've got those semi solid ones that you can jump down through.

You've got the ones that you Pogo on top of, yes, that will open up into solid platforms.

You can Pogo to a point, yeah, which I didn't mention, but you have a downward swing with your sword.

Yeah, but the game really opens up as you're buying upgrades in the manner where we're spending our gold from the previous run.

And yeah, I I'd say that right away from the Manor, that is where the Rogue Lights classification becomes really apparent here, where these are permanent upgrades and there are so many upgrades in this game.

Yeah, there's a ton.

So many just.

When you think you got them all, there's like two or three more.

I know and you you see this castle, this Manor, this upgrade tree expanding, it's this castle that's building and building as you buy something.

Just putting 1 upgrade point into a new skill that will open up another tree of upgrades and so you kind of don't know how far it's going to go for a while.

I'm confident I still don't have all the little squares on my manner.

You might not.

It takes a while.

And I played this way back in 2013 for the first time.

I played it in December 2013.

I looked at my Steam achievements and I saw the like time stamps on them and back then I think that Steam cloud saves were a thing.

And unfortunately just earlier today I tried opening up the steam version to see if the cloud had my say if it didn't.

So I lost 30 plus hours of game time on that version and I I think I got into like level.

I don't even know 200 plus I I played so much in that time, but in recent weeks I've played it on PlayStation 4.

So I got up to like level.

I don't know one at least 150.

I want to say I got so I got quite far in this and I was able to accomplish everything including getting credits, but not as I didn't do as much of like the end game grinding that I did back then.

So Disco Cola, now that we have played Rogue Legacy, we've caught up on a pretty classic indie game here.

What are your thoughts on this game?

I'm super curious because you're new to this and I've known about it for a long time.

What do you think?

I think I might have dropped a little hint the last time we were here recording.

I don't remember what I said, if I said anything but.

I'm going to be totally frank with you.

I was dreading this game like it's it's medieval, it's got a long play time, it's medieval and several upgrade purchases.

But.

And it's medieval.

Yes.

Did I forget to mention that it is medieval?

Not your favorite?

Thing just.

Just for people's contexts.

Disco doesn't like medieval things.

It's it's true, but much to my surprise I like almost everything about this game.

Wow, I really, really like this game.

Wow 1st and I almost forgot to put this in my notes.

I love vampirism.

Like without vampirism on multiple pieces of my armor I probably would not have beaten this game.

I love vampirism, it's so helpful.

So explain what's going on here.

So you can buy different pieces of armor and those pieces of armor might have different traits.

Sometimes they're just boosting your overall stats like attack, they might increase gold drops, but some of them.

And there's one vampirism piece for each of your different armor equip slots.

So for a lot of the game I had all, I think 4 out of five vampirism pieces of armor.

On so you're getting like 8 HP when he kills.

Yeah, at least, yeah.

And that was very necessary to my progression because I am taking hella hits.

So you're just healing every time you kill something, and you kill a lot of things in this.

Game kill a lot of things, yeah.

So vampirism was one of my favorite things.

So I just I didn't want to forget to mention that specifically the pixel art in this game is actually really uniquely sophisticated.

Like, at first glance, I kind of find it really unassuming.

But as I progress further and encounter different enemy types, but especially like bosses, there's some like classic technique being used here, but it still looks mostly modern.

And this game does that thing where some enemy types are just like physically upscaled versions of other enemy types, and some of them don't look great.

I'm thinking of like the big version of the flaming skull and the massive skeleton twins.

Those sprites don't look the best, just upscaled.

But I don't know, something about this game prevents other upscaled sprites from looking out of place.

It just it they still like the eyeballs.

Even the upscaled eyeballs I think look just like they fit in with the smaller eyeballs.

Yeah.

And it like, if nothing else, it's a really quick way the game communicates that, hey, this is like what you've seen before.

You could argue it's like an asset swap or whatever, right?

Or an asset flip.

That's fine.

I that never bothers me.

No, almost never.

Bothers because like it's, it's doing two things.

It's it's referencing something you've seen.

So there's familiarity, but also since it's big and maybe a different color, you expect it's going to be different a little bit.

And sometimes it's just more intense or it's just shooting more projectiles.

But there's a little bit of mystery and a little bit of familiarity with the new version.

Yeah, but even those like big ones, I don't.

Maybe it's just because of the overall whimsy that's present in Rogue Legacy that it didn't like seem out of place, like it made sense that they were there, you know?

And maybe Speaking of whimsy, that might be the other thing I love about this game.

This game can be brutal, but there's just a level of juvenile silliness and whimsy that softens the blow but doesn't go as far as games like Castle Crashers where it gets to like crass at times.

Yes, that's what I was going to reference to.

It's like it doesn't go that far.

This game has charm.

This game has humor that I think is still mostly in good taste.

There are some of the traits where I go.

I don't know if that wording has aged the best, but it's definitely better than.

Castle Crashers, It's just, yeah, the way the skeletons, they look so goofy.

Our disproportionately large head are exaggerated, like death shout when we die.

Getting traits like hypochondria, like this game is basically putting on the face of being a prankster so that you never take defeat too seriously.

And I really love that.

And I think, yeah, that might be my overall thing actually, is just that the personality of this game, flavor text on traits and on your ancestors.

It's just it's all so jovial wherever there is room to do so.

That is such a good point.

That's a great way to put it, too.

This game just wants to have fun.

Yeah.

And even when it's punishing, and it's really punishing in the beginning, yes.

So it has to do a good job at onboarding you and getting you comfortable with death in a way that makes you want to keep playing because things will get easier.

This game does get a lot easier as you practice it, as you understand it, as you get those permanent upgrades, you eventually sort of steamroll through this game, and that's a very powerful feeling.

But as a new player, you don't always know how that's going to go.

So I think the personality does a great job at keeping you invested.

I agree.

Yeah.

And you know, that's that's a great segue into the next point I have on here is that I love how progression sort of snowballs at a certain point.

Like you can go through several characters before even being capable of fighting the first boss.

Like even if you get there, you'll get one shot by the first boss.

But then once you are at a level where you can beat the first boss, your next ancestor on the next run is basically one shooting everything in the castle.

And then you move on to the forest feeling like a badass and maybe you get one shot by the 1st flower you find.

So that one shooting stuff in the castle is enough to make me feel like you can keep going.

And if nothing else, like at that point you can very easily farm the castle for a several generations.

And that's a valid way to approach playing this game.

It's just like I'm on a farm for a couple generations now that I can one shot everything in the castle.

This game rewards you for going back to the more rudimentary areas and just systematically going through every room, destroying all the furniture, destroying all the enemies, farming that gold, looking for runes, looking for equipment.

It does take more time, yes, but then you feel like you've earned a really nice progression afterwards.

Absolutely and then all of this is still fun because the controls in this game are hella tight and I it's hard for me to like make this compliment, but I would liken this to like Mega Man level tightness and controls.

Wow, and I wouldn't even say that about some of my favorites like Hollow Night or iconoclasts like.

Really.

Wow.

And you know, that's not to diss those games.

Those games are they're incredible.

But it gets to the point, like in Mega Man for me, where like the physics, the jump height, the maneuverability become second nature.

And when those controls become second nature, I can shift my focus from keeping my eyes on my character and platforms to keeping my eyes on the terrain ahead.

Because in my head to my hand is already doing the inputs for where I am, so my head can focus on where I'm going.

Yeah, I think this game is such a good feeling game that when you watch someone who's had practice with it, they look like an even better video game player because the game is just so naturally feeling good that they're just almost on autopilot.

Like, didn't did you find that as you played you sort of got on autopilot?

Totally on autopilot, especially in the castle.

Yeah, definitely.

It's such a great feeling.

And that's that comes down to just like how tight the controls are, like your jump height, your ability to move in the air as you're falling.

It's such great controls.

I think the music in this game is really good and that's an incredible accomplishment considering you're mostly only ever going to hear about 8 songs like total give or take.

And I, you know, I don't really love the forest song, but otherwise, like I'm in, like I especially love the song that's called Narwhal and that plays in the Maya.

I love that song.

It's nice.

Super dope.

Yeah.

I don't, I don't remember the Forest song much.

It's it's kind of ambient.

Yeah, it's more ambient.

It's kind of like, it's kind of just like classically spooky.

Not my jam, but and then you also get the option to sometimes find a jukebox in the levels and you can change the song if you're just like.

I kind of would rather listen to Narwhal instead of the the castle theme.

And that's another fun moment we we find a jukebox in a castle.

Yeah.

And the only reason for it to exist is to just have the option of changing the song you're listening to.

Yeah, it's it's super dope, super, super whimsical.

There's a lot more like specifics that I could mention here, but what it comes down to is that this game is insanely polished in almost every way and it takes me by surprise considering how assuming I thought it first appeared.

As far as things that I have for complaints, this is the obvious one.

If you're a rogue light game and you have a finish time greater than 6.5 hours like most likely I will consider you to be a pretty difficult Game 6.

.5.

Yeah, interesting.

Well, it's I'm just like, that's a sweet spot for like games that require a lot of platforming.

If you're like a story driven game, you know, maybe be into the 2 to 4 hour range.

We like the shorter games here.

We've we've not made that a secret, but this one took me over 30 hours and they were mostly like 30 hours that I enjoyed.

But that's that's too much time for me to.

Spend on a game.

It's a lot.

Yeah.

I played this for 30.

I looked on Steam, I think it was like 33 hours back in 2013.

Much of that was just trying to get those credits.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Next up, you have your spells right?

But there's that slot next to your spell where an item will be stored after praying for a blessing at a statue during your runs.

Yeah, very mysterious.

Yeah, there's never like, a very good description of what most of those items do.

Like, not all, but, but most.

So like, I'll get Hyperion's ring and I'm like, what is that?

Cool?

At least it's not, you know, the hedgehog's curse.

But I don't know what this is doing for me.

Some of them are kind of obvious, like Calypso's compass is obviously pointing you to something like that.

Makes it very clear but a lot of them just leave me wondering what's going on.

Right.

Certain inheritable traits are basically non starters for me.

And you know, this is not to devalue anyone out there that might live with these traits, but like the one where you're super skinny and will be pushed back when taking damage.

Yeah.

No, I never picked that once.

Never intentionally picked that one because I'm taking hell of hits and there's others that I never picked either but like.

There are too many rooms where there are skinny platforms and there are spikes on the floor.

You can't risk getting pushed back.

You know you, I often get hit by the little like enemies that look like Ponce de Leon.

Yeah, I get hit by those all the time and.

Then yeah, they go in a circle.

Yeah.

So there's like sometimes based on what your options are for picking your air, I just like, I basically take the L before I even begin that run because some of those trades just aren't going to cut it for me.

You know what I did?

At a certain point I would look at the traits before looking at the classes.

Oh, I did that pretty much the whole time.

Yeah, so you get 3 options of errors to choose from and it lists the class.

So that's like Hokage or Barbarian Queen or whatever.

That will largely determine your play style and what you can do and how healthy you are and how much magic you can use and all that stuff.

But then below that are those traits.

Some of them are more cosmetics, some of them have gameplay implications.

And I was just just scanning that list first.

Yeah, and, and for the most part, like a lot of the times, the class made very little difference to me.

Like sometimes it'd be like, oh, Hokage, cool, I get to go fast.

Or, you know, Barbarian Queen.

It's like, nice, I'm going to have a lot of health, cool.

But like otherwise it was like arch mage and spell sword and they were very rarely different to me because I'm mostly only doing swinging my sword.

They do have differences with the multiplier they apply to your base stats.

Of course, yeah.

So.

The way I understand it is that you have base stats that apply to all the classes, but then the Barbarians are going to have like multiple times the health of something like a spell sword, and then the spell sword is going to have more magic attack than if you use the same spell with a barbarian.

So that level of what gets multiplied, what gets divided depending on what you choose, That was also a mystery to me because I actually never picked Arch Mage because I liked melee and I didn't want to go in with a disadvantage on my melee attack.

And I didn't know like is it .5 X the attack power?

Like I just didn't know.

So some things I I would not pick just because I didn't know that mystery of the multiplication or division of the stats depending on the class.

Interesting.

Yeah, a lot of the time I was like, I've been in the place where instead of taking one hit to defeat this enemy, it took two or three.

So I can go back to that if I have to for this run.

Yeah, usually.

It's not like terrible.

It's not like, dramatically different.

Yeah, in most cases.

And then maybe, and this might be my least favorite thing about the game.

It may seem like such a small thing to a lot of people, but when you are slashing your sword and you try to change directions, you might be stuck moving backwards and swinging your sword in the wrong direction.

And I had a notably non 0 number of deaths that I would have not had if my character had simply like switched directions during the attack to the direction I was moving.

You know what's funny about this?

There is a trait that relates to this very thing you're talking about.

The game is aware of this.

So it's that stereoscopic one or whatever where you can't see in 3D?

No, no.

I have to look up the name one second.

I was looking this up earlier and I was like, Oh my gosh, that's what that does.

Hold on.

There's a trait called flexible and if you go to the wiki for this game it says the hero can turn mid swing to redirect their attack.

But back to your point about things not being explained with those prayer items, my big complaint with things not being explained in this game largely had to do with traits.

Like I I understand that a person in real life can be flexible, but within the confines of Rogue Legacy, what does that mean for a character that can swing a sword and jump?

Yeah.

I just don't get it.

So your your characters could be gay.

And it was just like, well, what impact does that have on my character?

And I never understood what that one does either.

Yeah, and some of them are purely just like cosmetic, like the one that is that adds A sepia filter to the whole game, you know, the reminiscent one or whatever it is.

But then gay will actually change who greets the player as their lover in the final cutscene according to the wiki, but does that.

But that doesn't change anything about your adventuring, your combat ability, and I don't think it.

Should and it shouldn't.

It shouldn't.

But I appreciate that this game has this many ideas and, you know, represents that as a trait.

That's cool.

It's just also that the game doesn't explain what the differences are.

So you make these decisions, sometimes blindly, including choosing ones that affect your.

Vision, yes, there's a there's a large number of those too, which is interesting, yes.

But yeah, that's my the least favorite thing is that I would several times be stuck swinging my sword in the wrong direction while moving my body in a different direction.

That was frustrating.

And then lastly, I think costs scale way too quickly.

And on a related note too, like blueprints come way, way too slowly.

Like I had all of my rooms before I beat the third boss, but I don't even have half of the blueprints.

In the game the blueprints are locked behind progression at a certain point.

Like you can't get the later game blueprints without going to the harder areas.

Right, but the runes unlock randomly because those are more on like a level playing field.

OK, yeah.

Oh, and then there's upgraded versions of every boss, and I think some of them are too hard.

But that's it.

I never beat any of those upgraded bosses back in the day.

I tried them and I just I gave up.

Back in the day, I wonder, did you beat any of this time?

No, I didn't beat any of this time.

I didn't even try them because I had those memories of them.

So I was like, I just need to get credits, so I didn't try them.

I beat the first one nice and there was I, I tried the second one a lot and there was one play session where I stayed on that one for like an hour and that was a mistake and I knew it.

Was a mistake.

While it was happening but I just was like it sucked me in man.

Cuz I would get to the point where it's like, I'm so close, you know, I would get like 3-4 hits away from beating it multiple times.

I bet you could do it.

I know, I know, I can do it with time.

I just don't have that.

So anyways, Rogue Legacy is my big sleeper hit this season.

I loved this game.

I wish it was just a little bit smaller because I truly do want to like upgrade my damage and upgrade my health to Max, but there's just too too much in that arena otherwise.

This was a surprising delight to play, and I would play more of it if I had the time.

I'm not quite as drawn to it as I was like inscription or Casey's mod, but I am bummed that I don't have time for more.

And I had a score in mind when I started my notes and based on where I put it in my backlog list.

But when I was writing about controls, I decided to boost it to a 9.5 out of 10.

Amazing, dude.

That's amazing.

I love that you love this so much.

I'm glad that it turned from a game that you were kind of dreading into one that you love.

That's Grace.

I love that.

Now I have to report that back when I played this 2013, you know, I hadn't played as many indie games back then.

I was but a fledgling indie game fan.

You.

Didn't you didn't know this about yourself yet?

You were a closeted indie.

Game I didn't know I would start a podcast with you one day covering indie games, right.

So back then I loved this.

I got so obsessed with this, played for 33 hours, didn't feel the time pass right.

My memory of it is that those 33 hours were just gold, you know, like literally I was picking up gold, but like no, no crap, right, no fat all lean right, really fun.

And so over the years as I played more indie games, that memory was rose colored and and now I don't want you to think I'm going to a place where like I disliked this game.

I still really like it a lot, but over the years as I made my top 100 indie games list, it was in my top 10 for a long time and it actually still is in the top ten.

I just haven't adjusted where it should go yet.

Oh.

OK, I was.

That's what I was like.

Looks exactly the same to me.

Yeah.

So I haven't had a chance to adjust it.

I need to figure that out.

But going into this knowing that it's now 12 years old, I was thinking, oh, this is probably aged really well in a lot of ways, but I wonder how I'll enjoy it this time.

Like it's a replay and I've played so many games since, what am I going to think?

And overall, this game is still addicting.

I think of the Pee Wee Herman PSA where he goes.

Have you seen the one about crack cocaine?

It's APSA of Pee Wee Herman sitting in a room silhouetted.

You don't even know it's Pee Wee Herman sitting there.

And then the lights come up.

He's in this Gray room, and he's completely dead serious.

But it's Pee Wee Herman, and he holds up a vial of crack cocaine.

He goes, this is crack rock cocaine.

It's one of the most addictive substances on earth.

And this game is crack.

Like this game is so addicting.

I can play this for so many hours and not feel the time pass.

I think this game feels so good to control.

Like you said the handling is tight, jumping feels really powerful.

Just your base jump is incredible.

The swings are so fast when you use magic, like if you think of throwing knives or deploying a an axe or whatever, it's always like super fast and reactive to your button presses.

I love the look of numbers going up, you know like your gold just going up and up and up as you're collecting it and also your stats going up as you upgrade.

Every run feels like you're advancing, even if it's the smallest advancement.

Like I can't think of a run maybe other than when I had to make a choice between like 3 really bad choices of a class I didn't want to play as and I didn't get very far.

Maybe I intentionally played poorly so that I would die sooner so I can get to a better class.

Some of those I didn't make a lot of advancing, but many, like 95% of my runs, I am at least getting enough gold where I can fund an upgrade in my skill tree.

So I'm always getting better.

You're always feeling that advancement.

Or maybe you'll find a new rune that you unlock or a new piece of gear.

So all that's happening constantly.

I like the variety of enemies and bosses.

You know, sometimes it's just a different color and it's a bigger version of something you've seen before.

But overall, when you look at the credits of this game, it does the Super Mario World thing where it shows you the the cast.

Of.

Characters.

I love when games do that.

And I love that song too, by the way, in the credits that just shows you the variety there, just screen after screen after screen of all the different enemies.

I also really like the clever traits.

You know, we said that the traits sometimes are poorly explained, but you know, just so many cool ideas are going on, even if they don't affect the gameplay a ton.

Like if you get the muscle spasm one, it will cause the controller to vibrate randomly.

And I didn't realize that that's what was happening until I was streaming this.

And I went to go for a BRB and I left the game up and I set my controller on the desk and the controller is vibrating.

And I'm like, why is that happening?

Is it because I'm sitting outside the castle and it's raining and there's Thunder?

And no, that's not why it's happening.

It's because I have that trait.

Dementia causes hallucinatory enemies to appear, which I do find annoying.

I never picked that trait.

Yeah, there's like a 20% chance that walking into a room will spawn an enemy that does attack you, but it doesn't actually do damage to you and you can't do damage to it.

So it's like a decoy.

You look at it and you can't tell that it's fake and you try attacking it and your sword just goes right through it.

It doesn't attack the enemy and the enemy can't hurt you.

It's just a distraction.

That's.

That's like a fun little that's they're just having so much.

Fun.

They're having so much fun.

It's so creative with the traits and also the peripheral arterial disease which causes no foot pulse.

That's one of my favorites.

One of my favorites.

I didn't know what it did for the longest time, but this makes it so that you won't set off floor traps as you run over them.

I really love the charm of the game.

You know, the Faro Deuce and the the humor that comes along with a lot of the trades.

It gives this game a feeling of lightheartedness and it keeps me wanting to play.

It's like someone's like sitting in next to you seeing you fail and they're just reminding you like, hey, it's not a big deal, just play again.

You know, that's that's kind of what the charm feels like in this game.

Steamrolling the game when you get overpowered, especially as just like a really beefy barbarian or something like that feels so good.

You can just like run through a room without stopping, mashing your attack button and you're just doing one swing to kill most things in the castle at a certain point and maybe you do another sweep through to collect all the golds that fell from all the enemies.

I just love that feeling in this game.

I don't know that this is the most aesthetically advanced game.

I'll say like, I'm not saying it's ugly, but it has a very approachable and simple and straightforward aesthetic.

All the enemies stand out.

You understand what things mean.

The the mystery comes in like what happens when you select a certain item or skill or trade sometimes, but the actual look of the game and what you were doing and the enemies, all of that just makes sense right off jump.

When I get to things I don't like about Rogue Legacy, I think my lists here in 2025 is longer than it would be back in 2013 when I first played.

The repetition and the grinding involved to make progress can sometimes feel like a slog.

You are in the castle, and by the castle I mean the first area of the castle, which is referred to as the castle.

You're in that place a lot, so you see a lot of the same sort of areas.

And this is ultimately a game about farming golds.

And I might try boss and it's too hard.

And I know that I have to get better armor.

I have to increase my critical damage chance and power and maybe a few other things.

And I know that, like you said, the upgrades get really expensive fast.

I know that that's going to mean that I have to farm quite a bit, and there is a satisfaction in seeing that advancement all the same.

But I think this game asks you to grind a lot.

It becomes less about the randomization and the rogue light aspects and what's what am I going to roll this run?

At a certain point you get so good at it that you can you can do the farming.

It's just about investing the time and that's a lot of time.

We both spent a lot of time in this game to prepare for this episode.

I don't know that a game like this with this personality and this level of ambition demands that scale of like just time investment.

Also, one thing I noticed this time around way more in 2025 is that rooms can be very cheap.

Some rooms will generate and when you go in them there's an enemy that attacks you with less than 1/4 second after you enter.

And so like sometimes it feels like you can't react.

You go in a room and there's no buffer time for the enemy to notice you and then attack you.

It's just like the enemy already knew you were coming in there and it's shooting something at you the moment you're entering.

And so you always are on edge in places like the Maya and Land of Darkness, especially where it gets harder.

I had AI had a unique experience and it only happened one time, but I, I was exploring downward in the castle and fell into the land of darkness, which I was like, you know, no big deal, I'm going to leave right away.

But it was like this spike pit, just like this straight down pit with spikes at the bottom, no platforms to jump on.

And so I just, I had to take the death there.

You had to, yeah.

There's nothing to save you there.

So that's just going to go along with a game with tons of randomization.

There's going to be that unfortunate pairing of like entrance and the second room you're going into.

It's just I noticed that there's sometimes, especially with enemies, just not that that buffer time.

And this is similar to comments we've made about other games such as Colt of the Lamb.

Like in that game sometimes there would be a super tiny room generated but like 12 enemies in that supertown.

They all have projectiles.

And so that doesn't feel very fair, and that can happen in this game too.

So I think the RNG can just place too many dangers in one spot with sometimes not enough of a reward for tackling them.

I think this game is missing out on some logic at a certain point of here's how much danger there should be for this reward, or we have this much danger, let's really reward the player for that.

You do get rewarded for really tough rooms, but there are some rooms that just give you nothing after a pretty tough battle, and maybe it's something that takes away a lot of your HP and kind of ruins your run.

Your chosen loadout of runes and spells also have no bearing on things like fairy chests.

There are fairy chests that give you runes and they often require you to have a very specific skill to get to them.

It'll say kill all the enemies in this room to get this chest, but the enemies are behind a wall and you need the the shock room spell to be able to crows or the crows.

And I get the sense there's nothing about the game reading my loadout and thinking we're going to give him more challenges and upgrades and runes and fairy chests that cater to what this player has chosen.

It's just randomly distributing everything.

And that's unfortunate because that's out of my control.

I just have to wait for the right luck to show up.

And that's, that's just weird.

It's a weird thing that this game is.

It sometimes feels like my runs are clogged with these rooms that tell me to do something and I can't.

And it for some players that are new, they might run into these rooms and they might go.

Well, it must be possible.

It must be possible, but like, could it be possible with what I have?

Or am I supposed to come back?

Like is there something I don't get about the mechanics?

It's just weird and I think it's just an oversight.

I think it's something that just back then, maybe the game design wasn't quite where it's at, or there's weren't as many games to be inspired by that had this idea, so they didn't even think about it.

Or maybe they knew about it and they just couldn't address it at the time.

Also, things like the damn clown challenges.

We have to throw the knives at the targets.

They're just there are situational rooms that are just weirdly way too advanced I think.

Can I can I mention something that I noticed about the the pick one of three treasure chests?

Oh, sure.

One time and I didn't notice until it was too late, I was wearing their nerdy glasses and you can see when you have the nerdy glasses it changes the color of the perfect chest.

That's cool.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah.

There are lots of little touches like that, too, I think.

I don't think we can shout that out enough.

This game has lots of little situational moments like that that some players might never encounter.

Right.

And that's really genius for especially for a game that came out in 2013.

But anyways.

But back to your clown.

Point.

But yeah, the damn clown rooms.

You, the one where you throw the axes can be aced every time if you know where to stand, but the ones where you like, throw the daggers at the targets?

It's way too hard for what it is.

Yeah, and I, I agree.

Like I think the threshold for a bigger payout needs to be a little bit lower because like I find a lot of satisfaction, especially when I'm getting to like the 5th target and I hit the 5th target, I'm like, hell yeah, look at me go I'm the boss.

But if you hit the 5th target, you've only collected 593, like 1500 gold.

Or is it?

I think it's less.

It's 150 gold, which is nothing.

It's not even close to like what you get from the target game for the same for way less effort actually.

I know.

So just like those two instances of the two games are giving you very different levels of reward for effort, but I'm not even caring about the gold at that point.

I want the treasure chest that you get for destroying all the targets and I've never been able to do that in the knife throwing game.

I've never gotten that chest is that's what I care about is the thing that gives me an upgrade and I just can't get it that way.

So I see that room, I see that it's a knife throwing challenge and I go, well, I'm not getting this.

I'll get some extra gold, I guess.

Yeah, that's all it is for.

And then again, the traits are poorly explains and effects are sometimes not apparent even after selecting them.

I've done runs where I pick a character.

It has a trait I don't recognize.

I don't even see the inherent like change that it's making, if it even has one.

And so some things I have to look up.

There are things like the prayer items, too, that I just don't understand unless I look up the wiki.

And then I think the story is, you know, it doesn't need to be in your face, doesn't have to be a a big ambitious narrative, but for what it is like, it's a little bit too spaced out for me to care about it.

We get some journal entries throughout the game and that adds some flavor, but again, a lot of it is at the beginning and the very end and I just.

I think I I.

Don't get a lot.

Of collected my final journal entry right after I beat the second boss and so like that's a whole 50% of game where I'm not getting any journal entries at all.

Yeah, so you just have this long stretch of time where it's really only about the gameplay, and that's fine.

But overall, Rogue Legacy I think has no doubt left a legacy.

Looking back, some decisions it makes do feel like oversights and it can be pretty grindy, but it maintains the fun of randomization and feeling yourself getting better with every run.

It has a very clever system of trades, equipment, and upgrades once you understand everything.

I back in the day would have given this a 10 out of 10 Disco Cola.

I'm going to give this with my 2025 mind.

And 2020.

5 glasses on my 2025 nerdy glasses on.

I'm gonna give it an 8.5.

Wow, does that sound fair.

That's quite a reduction.

It is quite a reduction, but this will no doubt still remain in my top 100 indie games list.

Oh, I have no doubt about that.

Yeah, and I have not played Rogue Legacy 2.

Have you looked up anything about Rogue Legacy 2?

If you looked up any videos?

Only on accident because I was trying to see what I assumed was the true ending of Rogue Legacy One.

Turns out there is not really a true ending.

You just get a harder version of the last boss.

That's what it is, but the art style pops in a different way and also also just happened.

The physical version just happened to come in stock at VGP Video Games Plus, which I believe is a like a Canadian GameStop basically.

OK, so if I wanted the physical for Rogue Legacy 2, I could get it there and it's on sale, right?

Now, yeah, it's definitely like a lot more modern looking.

I think there is more flexibility in how the classes differ gameplay wise.

I've looked a little bit into it through reviews, but I haven't played it myself.

It released in 2022 and.

That's so recent.

Very recent, yeah.

So like 9 years after this camp, you know, isn't that wild?

And I know that it, Rogue Legacy 2 is really popular, so I'd, I'd like to add it to our featured game potentials list, if that's works.

OK.

I'll I'll get that physical copy before it's too late.

Then yeah.

So we will hopefully review that someday.

And you know, you mentioned the vampirism, that being something you ran to in this game.

I am curious what other skills, trades, equipment, runes affected your approach to the game the most.

Well obviously any good platformer should have a double jump unlock or at least a character that specializes in double jump.

So I had a double jump.

I never went so far as to do a triple jump because your your rune equips are precious.

So I had a double jump and I had an air dash.

There is a like an upgraded version of a boss that gives you like 3 air dashes and I thought about like going hard on air dashes an.

Upgraded version of a boss.

So like each boss has an upgraded version, right?

Oh, I see.

And when you fight that boss, your character is pre.

That's right, yes.

Yes.

Yes, and one of them had like 3 dashes and I was like this is this feels great, Yeah.

So I thought about that.

This feels.

Great.

But mostly I and we talked about grinding and how grinding is usually not worth the reward.

So early on once I unlocked the part of the manner that says like increase gold drops or whatever, I went hard on upgrading that before pretty much anything else.

And so like that translates over to runes and a couple of armor pieces where I would like boost gold drops.

So double jump, air dash, gold drops, vampirism, that was pretty much it.

Yeah, I was obsessed with gold finds.

So in Manor, in the Manor tree in the lower right, there's a permanent gold increase that you can fund and it gets kind of expensive, but there are only 5 levels to it.

I'd say that is necessary to get like worth it.

That's going to dramatically cut down your overall play time.

It's going to make the game more fun because you're going to be able to buy more things sooner, thus making the game just like making you more overpowered sooner.

But then also I would switch between a really melee focus character like a barbarian king and the miner which will let you see treasure chest and also boost the gold you find.

They're more of a squishy character, but that's a great way to farm gold if you're sort of stuck and you need to buy something expensive.

How will I do a run where I get to keep enough gold to buy something that I need?

I was.

I was switching between those two a lot.

So when you're switching between those two, are you changing like your loadout a lot?

Because for me and I, this has become more and more obvious as we've played more games.

For Underplayed, I don't like to change my loadout.

I like to find something that works in all situations so I don't have to do all those button presses.

So that's I guess another reason I stuck with vampirism so much is that it's just like an all around useful trait if you're someone that likes to hit enemies.

So I know that I should have like changed loadouts more often than I did, but but how about you?

What did you?

Do largely I didn't change the loadouts a lot, I would change one or two runes so and it depended on what runes I had unlocked as well.

You unlock them in a random order.

Every player is going to have a different order.

Actually, this is cool.

This is like that statistic you've heard about playing card decks, where if you shuffle a deck of playing cards right out-of-the-box, it's very likely you'll have a configuration that has never existed on Earth before because of the number of variables with how randomly the runes unlock, the order that you unlock them is unique to you, and my order is unique to me.

So sometimes I wouldn't have gold finds, but I might have it on like one piece of gear and I would keep it on that gear for a long time.

I might change things here or there.

I might change a piece of equipment to boost the gold find on the miner or something.

But largely I did try to keep things in place because like you, I liked having vampiric runes.

I tried to have two of those and then I generally had one gold find rune, one extra jump rune, and one dash room.

I liked the movement, the maneuverability of the extra jump in the dash.

I don't think you need more though.

Yeah, I think the the dungeons designs to have the right layout of platforms that you can get around just fine with that configuration.

It's nice.

And there are some specific, very specific rooms that will generate that are like if you have one extra jump or if you have Hermes sandals and you jump extra high, like you get up to a special platform that can't be reached any other way.

But yeah, I found that you only needed the one extra jump and dash was very necessary.

There are a lot of deaths that I probably would have had had I not been able to like, dash away from a projectile really fast.

And I complained about some fairy chest just being inherently inaccessible for a lot of loadouts.

But there are fairy chest where it says get to this fairy chest without jumping or get to this fairy chest without looking at it.

Yeah, those are hard.

You need just one dash to get those, and so having that dash keeps you alive.

It also helps you find more upgrades.

I was also constantly upgrading my equipment weight maximum to allow for better armor.

Yeah, I'd say that's really important.

I did that to a point.

Once I got to the point where I had again 4 vampiric pieces and one of the ones that increases the gold value, I kind of stopped caring about it for.

For a while.

Because I was like, well, what could get better than this?

Probably not a lot.

There is a lot of really good armor.

There is, I know.

I found once I was like OK I need to beat bosses now.

I was like started looking at other armor.

Totally.

And then other things that I was just buying back and forth, I was going between these two things a lot.

Extra critical chance and critical damage I thought were very necessary if you wanted to just stick with someone who does a lot of damage in a short amount of time, minimizing the amount of damage you take.

So it's an example of like, being offensive is actually defensive because you're killing things.

Faster, right?

I didn't like look at how much that changed things for me, but I had a suspicion in my mind I was like, I bet that focusing on crit chance and damage is probably a good investment.

So I also put a decent amount of focus into that.

Yeah, because I think every level of the chance gives you another 2% chance of procking at a critical, which adds up.

That's huge.

And then for traits, I was going for things like hyper gonadism, which improves your knock back, which works on things like the final boss even like that'll knock back the final boss and make him give him a harder time approaching you And then.

This is where I'm not sure this is aged the best.

I don't know what this is saying about ADHD, but ADHD makes you move faster, 30% faster.

It's like, OK, that's that's fun.

It's fun.

What is that saying about ADHD?

I just I.

There was, yeah, a certain misunderstanding about all that ADH to how ADHD can present itself.

Yeah, I feel like if if ADHD were implemented more correctly in this game made this year, it might look more like some of the other traits.

Yeah, it might be like there's something tempting about a room, but then something about another room tempts you and you want to go to that room instead.

That would be more accurate, But I digress.

Yeah, I didn't.

I mean, yes, I looked at traits first and at the, I guess I would say I wasn't going for any particular traits necessarily, but ones that I would get excited that I had were ADHD because I like to move fast.

So if you're in ADHD, Hokage.

Oh my gosh, you're.

Sometimes you're moving too fast.

Too fast, Like you need to move toward enemies to hit them, but at that speed you have no practice for how fast that is and you actually throw yourself into spikes a lot.

Yeah, like there's and again, this goes back to how good the controls are.

You can swing and kill like a Candlestick, and the default speed at which you go you will catch the gold as you're walking from destroying that.

But if you're in ADHD Hokage, you're missing that gold, and then you accidentally leave the room and then that gold's gone.

That's what I should have called you at the top of the episode.

I'm doing just fine, my ADHD hokage.

But I would get excited for that.

And it took a while, but I did get excited for PAD peripheral arterial disease, and that's especially helpful in like one of the bosses, I can't remember which one.

The land of darkness one the slime guy cuz they have they have spikes on the floor.

Yeah, that's the only reason I was able to like, I think ultimately defeat that.

One, that's a good point.

What else?

I mean, those two were were my biggest ones.

It was mostly about the ones I was avoiding.

Yeah, totally.

It informs my decision.

First and foremost is the ones that I don't want.

Yeah, that filters things out, and then I select from there.

When we look at the four areas, I think it's interesting to note what makes them each special and different and stand out.

There's the castle, there's the forest, there's the Maya, there's the Land of Darkness.

Ideally, that's the order you approach them.

So it goes like difficulty one through 4 in that order, and the game tells you that on a little map in.

There.

Which I I liked.

I don't actually.

I didn't remember that from, you know, 12 years ago that it, that the game sort of instructed you in that way.

But I, I like that generally the formula of the layout is predictable.

Like go to the South, that's Land of Darkness, go to the east, that's the forest.

Go to the north, that's the Maya.

But when you think about all these areas, does anything stand out about any of them?

Well, I think they all have a very distinct identity and a lot of it comes down to visuals, of course.

But like the Maya might have a lot of really tall vertical rooms with a lot of like the semi solid platforms, whereas the forest isn't going to have as many of those.

They're going to have the really wide rooms because it's far to the east and it, you know, there's not, you're not building up, you're building to the right.

But otherwise, you know, I think a lot of it comes down to what you might expect as far as which enemies are difficult, even what color choices they kind of make.

So like some of the Knights that you see in the castle when you get to Land of Darkness, they're like colored red.

And that's to show that they're the harder version.

But also it's the Land of Darkness, so they're red.

Yeah, even though it's really dark in there, like things generally are just that color, so they fit.

And like the forest will have a higher number of the floaty magical characters of multiple types of multiple like elemental types, but that's going to have things that kind of make sense in the forest.

It's like, oh, there's these druity spirity type people and they would be in the forest as opposed to.

The.

The tall tower at the top of the castle.

And then usually the common enemies you find in all the areas, they are on average more symbolic of that area's boss, which makes sense too.

I think the bosses have an unpredictable difficulty level based on the order you're ideally supposed to face them.

So like when you think of the castle being the first area, you'd think that boss, the big eyeball, would be the easiest.

In my opinion the order of difficulty from easiest to hardest is completely like remixed from the intended order of the areas.

So in my opinion the boss difficulty from easiest to hardest would be the one in the forest.

So Alexander, I think that one's the easiest but close second is the big eyeball in the castle and then third would be the land of darkness which is the big slime that splits apart a lot.

It's still hard but I think the one from the Maya which is Ponce de Leon is the hardest in a lot of ways.

Once you find out a good Strat for him he gets a lot easier, but the difficulty went 2143 for me.

Interesting, that's how I saw them.

I I mean I think the at least the HP for each boss is scaled accordingly as to what it should be.

Oh OK, but as far as like dodging attacks like I had the least amount of trouble with the one in the land of darkness actually because I find the slimes very easy to avoid for the most part.

And sure, it's spawning the floaty magic dudes, but.

As long as you.

If you have.

Like up with attacking them, You're fine, you just have to manage it.

But, you know, and that's where it's like, sure, it's the easiest for me to dodge compared to the eyeball who's shooting a lot of projectiles at you.

But the HP of, like, the floaty magic dudes that come out is going to be too substantial for me to, like, go there first, even if I avoid all the enemies along the way.

Yeah.

On the castle, the place you see the most, one praise I can give to it is that it's also the place that felt like it had the most diversity was just sheer number of rooms.

They all look like they're they have the same aesthetic, obviously, so you're kind of looking at the same general look.

But I was finding new rooms in the castle for many hours after starting.

I would be like 12 hours into the game and I would go into a room and I'd be like, I haven't seen this yet.

This is in the opening area.

That's wild.

So it's possible they have a greater pool of rooms to draw from.

I'm thinking of blueprints now for the for that castle section, just the first section.

So I was impressed by that.

And I guess that kind of leads into our last topic, which is, given the age of the game, what rogue light ideas were ahead of their time, What was impressive for 2013?

And what do you think maybe was a good like starting point, but that has been improved with other games you've played sort of in this genre world?

So I think, and since you're talking about getting a larger pool of rooms, I think it really is impressive that it is randomly generated.

But it randomly generates in a way that A you get rooms that you've seen before, like there are like a set of predetermined room builds, but B that it arranges itself in a way that there are no dead end doorways.

You know, like no matter what it arranges itself in a way that the semi solid platform that goes down will lead to something every time and.

It's not like because of what randomly generated next to it that will be shut off like it's always.

It's randomly generating next to something that is appropriate for it to sit up against.

Yeah, I those problems don't really arise.

And there are the warp pads that make it really easy to maneuver around.

I was doing that a lot close to the end of the game too.

It's hard because until like this episode, I've still been of the mentality that I don't like rogue lights.

I think I do.

I think I actually do.

So I don't know.

I think the one thing that this does that is absent from most other rogue lights I've played safer.

Maybe Slay the Spire is discipline.

This game is massive and it it feels like it could be completed, but I know, I just know looking at it, it's a time commitment.

Other Rogue lights I've played, like even Iris and the Giant.

I still have a long way to go to complete my card collection, but it's going to take half the time that it would take to complete Rogue Legacy.

Well the other thing is that you could argue that there might not be an end to this because in new game plus which becomes really fun and what I got sucked into 12 years ago, you can keep finding chess that upgrade your stats permanently.

So you know those chess you open after a boss will give you like 3 random trade upgrades?

You can find those more commonly.

I remember just it's a snowball effects again.

It's it's you're finding more and more attack power, more magic attack power, more defense, and then you can just survive more things and you keep going and going and going.

OK, So those are permanent.

I I was, yeah, yeah.

Those persist.

So is this extra health just on this run or will I have that extra health in the next one too?

Yeah, those I believe are are permanent across all runs, which is really exciting to me.

I love you.

Know I agree well and it's because you that's what you get in fairy chests after you've collected all the runes like if you have all the runes, yes, that's what it switches to.

Yes.

And so you're finding tons of those constantly.

Yeah, and the ability to freeze the castle with the architects.

That was really cool.

That is very clever.

It's clever because it is a very easy way to just grind on a boss.

You can warp right to a boss.

If you lock down the castle, it will look exactly like your previous run, including chest that you opened will remain open and you can't open them again, but enemies will respond.

You could farm gold from enemies, but really you want to do this to get back to a spot that you found by uncovering the map.

And so that really cuts down your play time when you know you're powerful enough to beat Ponce de Leon, you just need to kind of attempt him 5 to 10 times.

So I appreciated that a lot.

The the world record holder for speedrun makes obvious use of OH.

I bet, I bet yes.

And then for things that have improved in a lot of games since, you know, other than the fairy chest example and you know, finding those permanent upgrades in Rogue Legacy, you don't really get better during your runs.

You go in with your stats, your class, your traits, your equipment, all that stuff.

And that's just like how good you'll be.

And then all that changes is maybe you pick up a different spell and maybe you'll lose health and then you'll heal health, but your stats don't change during the runs.

And in a lot of rogue likes and rogue lights, we find that our stats adapt as we make choices during the run, and that can make things more interesting sometimes because you're making a decision like in the heat of battle.

Yeah, that's a really good point.

Yeah, so that's something that's changed in a lot of these games.

Do I think that has to happen in a modern Rogue light?

Not necessarily, but I think it makes things interesting.

And then the fidelity and visual flare, just how this game looks.

If you look at Rogue Legacy 2, I think Rogue Legacy 2 looks a lot better.

It's multitudes better looking I think, in my opinion, but that's subjective.

Anything else to say about Rogue Legacy?

I don't think I have anything else.

I'm so glad that it was a very pleasant surprise for you.

Yeah, I really loved it.

Like, man, even last night I was, I I was writing my notes and I was like, OK, I need to do this joke for Bopo's intro.

I need to go look at some of the words that they use.

And then I ended up just playing a a run or two of that before moving on to blueprints anyway.

Love it.

Well, I'm so glad that it held up for me and that it ended up being such a pleasant surprise for you.

That is our review of Rogue Legacy.

You can play it on and get ready for this list.

PC, Mac, Linux, Switch, PS3, PS4, PS Vita, Xbox One and iOS Disco Cola rated it a 9.5.

I rated it an 8.5.

That's the end of this episode of Underplayed.

You can find more of our episodes at kzum.org/underplayed and on common podcast platforms like Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Our music was composed by Jack Rodenberg.

Our art comes from Oni Mochi.

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You can also find my links down below and I stream a variety of indie games on.

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Yes, they can.

Next time we'll have two more secret games to review, a discussion with Kara from Patch magazine, and our featured game will be Blueprints, a puzzle adventure developed by Doguvom.

Until then, everyone keep on playing.