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Alec and James take Miku and Taku through a mysterious overgrown world. What wonders will they find? Our show music is "Liftoff" by Amie Waters
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Details
Alec and James take Miku and Taku through a mysterious overgrown world. What wonders will they find? Our show music is "Liftoff" by Amie Waters
Comment
Alec and James take Miku and Taku through a mysterious overgrown world. What wonders will they find? Our show music is "Liftoff" by Amie Waters
Listen to Episode 012 - Submerged Hidden Depths by 321Backlog! MP3 song. Episode 012 - Submerged Hidden Depths song from 321Backlog! is available on Audio.com. The duration of song is 01:16:50. This high-quality MP3 track has 958.496 kbps bitrate and was uploaded on 31 Aug 2023. Stream and download Episode 012 - Submerged Hidden Depths by 321Backlog! for free on Audio.com – your ultimate destination for MP3 music.
This transcription is a conversation between two friends discussing various topics such as beard care, webcams, and a video game called Submerged Hidden Depths. They talk about their experiences with beard maintenance, using beard straighteners, and the pros and cons of different webcam brands. They also mention their preferences for buying items in person versus online. Towards the end, they briefly discuss the game Submerged Hidden Depths, describing it as a non-combat, third-person exploration adventure set in a sunken world. They mention the positive reviews and compare it to other ocean exploration games like Raft and Assassin's Creed Black Flag. Overall, they express some disappointment with the game. 3...2...1...Dark Lord Hey, I think we should probably officially start the podcast. Are we doing a podcast? How long have we been talking for without actually saying who the hell we are? I'd say 15 minutes because now it is officially afternoon. Welcome back to 3...2...1...Backlog. We are your hosts. I'm James and this is my good friend Alec who's joining me today. He is an expert in hair transplants. What's up, dude? What's up, man? I don't think I could ever transplant the beard though. There was a show I remember seeing on I think it was MTV or something called Silent Library. And they did this episode where the whole point of the show was they'll do something weird and you try not to laugh loud like audibly laugh and you get money for every minute or something that you cannot laugh. But one of the things they did was like a beard transfer. So they like came this guy with a huge burly beard comes in and sits next to this group of friends and they just paint glue on one of the friend's faces and then they shave this guy's beard and just vacuum transferred it by like blowing onto the other guy's face. That sounds terrible. It sounds gross and funny. And I think they laughed. I mean I don't know about you but every time I get like a straggler beard hair like on food and subsequently in my mouth, it feels like a pube. I don't want another man's beard hair in my mouth. I don't either. Yeah. I don't even want my own. I don't like that. We did this a couple of episodes ago and my webcam is currently out of commission so you can't see this. But an update on 321beardcast, we're up to four inches. Dude, mine is very short these days. I need to. It looks good though. Thank you. I worked hard on it. I did nothing. I trim it every day. There's like the straggler hairs that stick out. I trim them off. I don't know if you like do you put anything in your beard to keep it looking so like perfectly formed? If I got stuff going on where I need to be talking with people face to face or on camera, I put a little oil in it. Okay. Maybe run the straightener through it. I got this beard straightening comb. It works? Yeah, it works pretty good. What are the parts of a comb called? The bristles? The teeth. The tongs? The tangs? I think they're called teeth. Yeah, I don't like it but yeah. A good portion of the teeth on this comb have heating pads on it. That's weird, man. You don't burn yourself? No. The tips are plastic so you have a barrier so you can rub it against your skin so it feels like you're combing normally but a little bit farther off your skin is a several hundred degree hot iron. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I would do something like that. Yeah. Sometimes I do it a little too soon after getting out of the shower and it like boils off the- Sizzles. It sizzles and boils off the water and I get like smoke rising through my beard into my nose and shit and then it stays extra hot and it hurts really bad so I try to not do that. If you've got like smoke coming off the beard? Yeah. I wonder if I can try and take a picture while that's happening so you can see it because it looks like my beard's on fire. Yeah, once you get a new webcam, a Logitech C920 or Razer Keo. I think I'm going to get the Razer, dude. I'll get it right now, dude. I'll go. I'll run out right now. At the end of this session, I will break my webcam in half and I'll have to get another one and there we go. Do you do the protection plans? I don't. I don't either. No, I don't think anybody does. I think that's what's keeping companies busy. I did once and I needed to use it and the fight you go through on what they consider is a manufacturing thing and what's not is ridiculous. Yeah. It's ready within an hour. One left in my town. Are you going to get it from the Best Buy? I mean, I could get it today. I don't know why but buying something in person to me feels like better even though Best Buy has an extremely short return window. It feels more real. Yeah. That's why I do everything off Amazon because it doesn't feel like I spent the money. If somebody sees me swiping my card or handing over that cash, it feels a lot worse. I'm like, oh, I just clicked a button. It's like, yeah, that transaction didn't happen and I can worry about it later. You know, in retrospect, if there is a reason to choose one over the other, I'm not a very big fan of Razer software. However, Logitech's current software is not even installed on my computer. So, I do have Razer software installed. So, maybe that would be a big determining factor. I've got, like I said earlier, I've got my Razer mouse but a Logitech keyboard. I do like the Razer mouse but I don't like any of the software with it. And I think the software that I have is kind of overkill because it does things that my particular mouse doesn't need. Right. Like RGB control, this doesn't have RGB. Well, it does but I just pick a static color. I don't need a pulse on me. Actually, my Logitech pulse is and I need to change it. Yeah. Well, our microphone's both pulse too which is kind of… Yeah. Well, yeah, the pulsing I kind of… It's slow enough that it's not distracting but I think… It's still weird that they're syncing across 300 miles. Like I can see on your webcam when it cycles to a certain color and mine's doing the exact same thing. That is pretty strange. It really gets you into like a derealization kind of mindset. So, go Google that. You want me to close my listener? You want me to close out my webcam? No, it's all right. Thanks so much for listening. That wraps up our discussion. That wraps up our discussion for communist cameras. For communist cameras? Yeah, I mean technically, right? Speaking of communist cameras, that's a… What are we talking about this week, man? What are we here to discuss? We're talking about the game, Submerged Hidden Depths. Submerged Hidden Depths I love the delay. Dude, if you had to describe this game, if I had to describe this game personally, I would say, boat, climb, solve, and explore in beautiful ruins of a sunken world. A drowned city, crumbling tips of skyscrapers, stubbornly standing above the waves. Deserted villages now inhabited by enigmatic creatures. And beneath the surging ocean awaits an anguished, angry presence. Submerged Hidden Depths is a non-combat, third-person, relaxploration adventure. Set in a sunken ruins of a beautiful world. Take on the role of Miku and Taku. These are the first times I've heard their names. One cursed with the mysterious power that she wants to use for good, and the other practically doesn't exist. Yeah, that about sums it up. That's it. I feel like that's what Steam said about it. Yeah, so this is a single-player game. It was released in December of 2020. Uppercut Games Stadia Games Entertainment. Stadia is like a Google thing. I don't know about Uppercut. It was on every platform except Wii, right? PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox, and Stadia. So it must have been a Stadia primary game. Yeah. It was positive. It had positive reviews. Again, Metacritic showing a lot lower than what I'm used to on Steam. I'm starting to wonder, is Metacritic maybe the better source of a review number? Because personally, I agree a little bit more with Metacritic on this one. I do as well. So let's see. Other games we've had a big score differentiation. Inside did poorly on Metacritic, but it did well on IGN. Right. And I feel like Metacritic... I don't know. I feel like Inside was a better game than Submerged. Spoiler. I do too. I think it was a good experience, but it was... I don't know. It wasn't what I was expecting, and I guess... So I feel like this happens a lot when we go and do these games and pick them to play. They're typically already in our library. I know Diablo was a one-off, but typically we already owned these or had access to them before we record and start playing. Yeah. I found this because it was one of my free games on Epic like a while ago. So every Epic launcher every week has one or up to, I think, three sometimes games, and this was one of them. So it was 100% free to me, and it was in my library. I am now clicking on Epic to see what the free game this week is. Yeah, I think there was one that looked interesting, but I kind of ignored it. Anyway, so... No, anyway, we played on our gaming group for a couple months, it feels like, the game Raft. Yeah. And this heavily reminded me of Raft from like an aesthetic standpoint. Yeah. So I was like, oh, it's going to be like another ocean exploration. We're going to have maybe a little bit of a story, and maybe we'll do some building or something or have like some thing. You know, in the game, you could like find upgrades for your boat, but I feel like it was just collectibles. You didn't actually change your boat at all. Right. Well, yeah, yeah. Not really. Okay, so it reminded... Yeah, to me, I thought when I first saw it, the game, like the cover, the image that you see, like the thumbnail of the game, looked really pretty, and it looked like it was going to be like a very... I like games that take place on the ocean or, you know, on the high seas and stuff like that. So I had a pretty good feeling about it initially, but, man, it didn't really deliver as much as I was hoping. I think I fall in that same boat with you on that type of setting. You know, I... Yeah. Cool. Let's have an Assassin's Creed counter. Assassin's Creed Black Flag, one of my favorites. I really want to play that. Go down to... Slap it on my BL, dude. Yeah, going to Raft, same thing. We really enjoyed that. It had a building aspect. I've got... This was on my backlog. I've also got, like, I think two others that are primarily you're out on the open ocean in some form, doing mostly exploration and then another kind of mechanic. There's another one. I forget how to say it, but it's, like, it's spelled T-C-H-A-I, I think. And that one's on my list as well. It was another free game that I got a while ago. And a similar thing. You're going to be exploring and all that. So I definitely like that genre, that setting, if you will. Yeah. I don't know if that's just because we both kind of grew up near water maybe. Maybe. Or if it's just kind of an appealing thing. Windbound was another one. Windbound. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, dude, Sea of Thieves. I played that a ton. Sea of Thieves. Yeah. Doesn't every boy like pirate stuff, though? I think so. Like, isn't that, like, that's probably what it was, really. I think it's that sense of, like, freedom and being able to do what the fuck you want. Yeah. You can just drink too much and puke on your friend kind of thing. Yeah. Play the Gertie Gertie. Yeah, dude. I was going to say, yeah, dude, yeah. So, okay, you played it on your Steam Deck? 100% on the Steam Deck. So was that really the first game that you really got to play on your Steam Deck? Yes, it was. And you played it through Epic Launcher, which is cool, too. Yes. It worked well. I had to go through a whole, one thing that's really good about the Steam Deck is there are a ton of community posts and forums and amazing steps on how to install this stuff that's not on Steam. Yeah. So, I mean, I think the whole setup took maybe 20 minutes, and then I was playing, which I was surprised how easy it was. But, yeah, 100% on Steam Deck. It ran for what it was. It ran very well. Yeah. That's cool, man. And I had a good time with it. I'm glad that you, because I actually, the only non-Steam Deck, non-Steam native game that I've actually played on my deck is Diablo 4, which, again, there's a couple hoops, but it was easy to figure it out. I've only ever played Steam games and that. So, it was cool that the Epic Launcher, the way you installed it, worked well for you, because I haven't had that experience yet. Yeah. You had to go through, I forget what the things were, but I think you mentioned on a previous stream it was like Proton or something. I had to, anyway, I had to find, download, and enable a couple different programs and go through and have, I think there were some scripts that ran and stuff. It was, anyway, it was a lot easier than I thought, but I found a guide that ran me through every single step, like with pictures and screenshots and stuff. It was very, very well done. There's also a lot of YouTube videos that show all that stuff, too. I've had a lot of videos on YouTube that just kind of explain the whole process, and you can see them actively doing it, so there's no, hold up, you just paused the video? So, I guess this would be a good time to talk about the worst thing that's ever happened to me. My Steam Deck broke. Yeah. Yeah. So, what's the word? It's already been RMA'd and back to Valve, right? Yeah, so it arrived back to Valve yesterday. I haven't heard any update on it at all, but it arrived yesterday afternoon, so I'm assuming they'll start getting into processing it and everything. It sounds like it takes about two weeks, generally, so I'm guessing whenever they get into diagnosing it, it'll be pretty quick. What happened was it seemed, I thought it was brought on by an update, but then I reverted the update, and it didn't seem to be that. I think that my B button, which functions like as a back button, was just constantly firing at a random speed, always on or always off, and it wouldn't work. I couldn't actually hit B to back out of things, so I don't know if it was overloadingly spamming it, but then when I thought it was a software issue, I tried to revert back to factory reset, and with it constantly spamming the back button during that, I thought it was going to brick my Steam Deck because, again, I wasn't aware that it was spamming the B button. I just knew that the B button wasn't working, and neither was the Steam and the three-dot button, whatever that is, the menu. I thought the problem was different, so when I went to factory reset it, I think it screwed up the factory reset because the B button was spamming, and I thought I bricked my deck. Then I'm texting you about it, like, yeah, it seems like my Steam Deck broke, and it bricked or whatever, and then it just turns on, and it actually did factory reset. I just set it down, and I'd given up on it, and then 15 minutes later, it turned on again on its own. I don't know. We'll see. I have pretty good confidence in the RMA process. It was still under warranty. It seems like other people have had luck with it, too. I know it wasn't water damage. I know it wasn't... I keep everything very clean, so I know there wasn't anything, and I didn't even use it that much. I think it was just a faulty, maybe a faulty book chip set or something like that, and it's also had a couple other things occur randomly. The Steam button sometimes wouldn't work until I reset it. I thought that's what was going on this time. Keeping on the conversation about the Steam Deck, and I might bring this up at the episode where this is relevant, but we've been talking about another game to play to possibly record soon, but I was running through that, and I tried docking the Steam Deck for the first time. Yeah. I did run into an issue where I couldn't get a Bluetooth control to work, but anyway, the part to call out is I was playing a game through Steam on my Steam Deck, docked, and when I used a Xbox controller, I got another screen that came up on the Steam Deck saying, hey, we know you're using a controller that's not Steam, and it gave me basically a little prompt saying, here's the Steam Deck buttons. Here's what Xbox should look like. Here's what Nintendo should look like. Here's what PlayStation should look like, and it was like, if it asks you to hit this button, look at your controller and you'll see which button corresponds to that, and I just thought it was kind of like a nice little testament to how Valve is kind of taking into account the player experience. Yeah. That screen would never exist on Xbox or on PlayStation because it wants you to use native software and native equipment. Hardware, yeah. Yeah, but Valve's like, hey, I know you're going to be possibly using something that has got different button layouts, so hey, this might help out. I thought that was really cool, and I showed that to my wife, and she didn't quite understand why I was doing that. She's like, okay. She's like, okay, what's the deal? I don't understand. But anyway, I thought that was really cool. I agree with that. Yeah. I want to dive more into, not now, but when you get time, I want to figure out this Bluetooth thing because if that's something that's wrong with your Steam Deck for whatever reason, that needs to be taken care of as soon as possible because that limits headphone use, controller use. That's a big problem. I connected my Bluetooth headphones to it fine. I tried using the Xbox controller that came with my Series S, and it USBs fine. Yeah. When I went to do strictly wireless Bluetooth, it recognized it, but when I unplugged it, it didn't know. The controller tried going back to my Xbox, even though my Xbox turned off. I saw some Reddit posts from a while ago. I might need to plug in my Xbox controller to my PC and try to look at some updates for it. Yeah. I remember I bought a brand new Xbox controller for my wife, and it didn't register on the Steam Deck because the firmware had to be updated. Right. Then I had a couple issues actually updating the firmware. I wasn't able to do it on my PC. I had to use her brand new Windows 11 laptop. Interesting. Funny enough, I just upgraded my laptop to Windows 11. Okay. Theoretically, you should have no issues with that. I do remember brand new, out of the box, it didn't work, updated firmware, and it was fine. Right. I upgraded my Elite Series 2 controller, and it worked out of the box. I upgraded the firmware, and it did not work anymore on the Steam Deck, and I had to revert the firmware. Right. These are like nightmare scenarios that aren't really that bad. Probably the age of the controller, because that controller in my living room right now, I've had it for a couple of years now. In theory, if you plugged it into the Xbox, it would update, right? Yeah, but it's updating for the Xbox. I think whatever firmware is going to it, I would assume it's going to patch it or do something, so it will be registered on a Linux device. Maybe. I think that's where the issue is. But your PC is not Linux. Correct. I don't know, man. Anyway, I'm going to figure it out later. You played it on Steam Deck. I played it on Steam Deck. For the Steam Deck, because it was the, quote-unquote, Relaxpiration tag that this game was given, I think it worked really well, because you said you do this with games. You'll play as you're going to bed and stuff like that. This was perfect for that. There was no combat. There were no difficult controls. It wasn't a difficult game by any means, but it was really nice to have something that you could really relax on. I have some issues with the game, but for a play experience, I think it was fine. I think it was good. It's a good before-bed kind of game. I agree with that. I didn't have my Steam Deck, because it broke. But when I sent it out, that same day, I went to a store and I bought, on your suggestion, probably half as a joke, I bought a Backbone. Dude, it's surprisingly a really good experience. Yeah, because your phone is doing all the processing power. Not entirely. I'm using Steam Link, the app. My PC has to be on and I have to be on my home network. Oh, interesting. There's a tiny bit of lag associated with that, but my network at home is pretty good and I have mesh Wi-Fi or whatever. It's pretty good. Every once in a while, I'd get a little hiccup. Again, this game is not a complicated game. I think even with that little bit of lag or latency, I'm sure it would be fine with this particular game. Yeah. The latency, I never really felt like there was latency unless there was a hiccup, which happened maybe 10 times in the entire playthrough of this game. Dude, I really think the Backbone, if you have a decent gaming PC and you don't want to buy a Steam Deck and you don't plan on ever leaving the house, if you have a more modern phone, I think the Backbone is a really good option for people. Just using Steam Link, the app. Yeah. I thought about getting one for the wife, but she already has enough trouble just playing games in general, but she's always on her phone and she does a lot of idle phone games. I think my thought process was like, oh, if she's already playing with her phone, she could throw the Backbone on there and it's basically like opening an app and then she could swipe over to deal with text messages or something. I thought about maybe getting her one. Well, I wonder if it's an idle native phone game, if it even would support a Backbone controller. True, true. Yeah, she's got like an off-brand Samsung. It's technically a Galaxy, but it's not like ever one that you hear about. It's like one of the super, super base model Samsungs. But it performed well. It stood up to the test. The only thing that sucks about it is they are, for my, using an iPhone, I had to buy the iPhone specific one. Yeah. And that kind of sucks because I think we just talked about this. I think that the next iPhone might be either wireless entirely or USB-C, and therefore this thing is now pointless because I will either sell, I will get money for my current phone either way. I'll either sell it or use it as a trade-in or something. That kind of sucks. I mean, it's a cool device, but I want to be able to use it. It's not like a controller you just hang on the wall and you take down if you want to play Sega. It's meant for a specific phone to do specific things. Right, right. So it will be pointless. But luckily, I don't care how anybody feels about this, I will still be within the return window when they announce the next phone. So I can make that determination if I want to. Yeah. Did the Backbone have any particular software you had to download, or was it plug-and-play? It might have been plug-and-play, but there is a software associated with it. They try to sell you on this $10 a month Backbone Plus thing, which allows you to have a little bit of a social media platform associated with using it, like achievements or something. You can track what your friends are doing. But it might have been plug-and-play. It might have been plug-and-play. I don't know if a game would just detect it, but it was pretty seamless to get it going. And the only thing, if I can complain about it, that I would say is annoying, there is a Backbone-specific button that opens the Backbone app, where you can, I guess, view what your friends are doing. It is where I think the start button should be. If I'm going to pause the game, I will hit it and it will take me to a different app entirely, and then I have to swipe to the other app. Let me guess. I would assume right-hand side on that side of the controller? Yeah, just like the analog stick. Yep. And then that same button that I don't even fucking like being there also lights up when it's charging. So if I'm playing in bed before I go to sleep, it's like the brightest red button lit up, pulsating. Right. I mean, it's actually brighter than my screen when I'm trying to go to sleep. It's insane. It's fucking crazy. It's a deal-breaker. And also, it's not compatible with phone cases, which I always keep a case on my phone. So the first thing I do is I take my phone out of the case, Backbone up, and then that's how my phone charges for the night. I'm surprised they didn't... Well... It would be weird because they would have to have like an extra long USB. And then also all phone cases are so different. Mine, I just got the OtterBox. I think it's called like the Defender, but it's the one that's fully... Like thick AF? It's thick as fuck, and it has a cover over the charging port to make it somewhat water-resistant. I don't like that. I have to like peel that back to plug something in, and then it would rub up against the cord and all that, so... There's no way you could get a snake of Backbone on there. No. No. And that's why they do it, but it makes sense. But imagine if you had to take your entire phone. I feel like my phone would be... Yeah, I don't know how big the Backbone is, but my Galaxy S23 Ultra might be too big. I mean, most like phone holders and stuff don't even fit this thing. Well, yeah, the Samsung phones are really long and skinny. I'm not a fan of that. I like a phone to... I'm sorry, guys. I'm sorry, everybody. I like the iPhone's proportion screen ratio size. I've used both. I'm very proficient in Android and iOS, but I have to use an iPhone for my job. Sorry, guys. I think if Apple didn't lock me out of my Apple TV because I didn't have an available Apple product to reset my password, I probably would have gone to them. You don't have Apple TV? I have the application, the service, Apple TV, and I forgot my password because we like Ted Lasso. We watch it for one fucking show. When the show ended, I canceled the fucking thing because there's nothing else on there for me. Yeah. I basically tried recovering it. I couldn't get... I didn't have an Apple device that I could use. It made me wait. It said we are... I got an email. We are going to email you in 14 days, not within 14 days. We're going to email you in 14 days at this time, and then you can use that link to recover your account. You will get a message to your Apple Watch in which I want you to respond using your AirPod Pro Max. It's so stupid. It's so stupid. Apple can eat it. Yeah, I don't like it. Yeah. Anyway. They're really nasty about that. This is no longer a video game podcast. This is only about technology. No, it's not. Brother. Oh, man. Alec, my friend. Did you know this is a fucking sequel? What? Yeah, dude. We played the second game without playing the first game? Yeah. I feel sick inside. I knew that. I found that out after I beat it. What? There's a game called Submerged. Oh, no. Yeah. It's a third-person combat-free game. But, yeah, I just thought that was pretty funny. It also kind of looks almost like the same game. Are we sure Hidden Depths isn't like the pro version or like the one that had the DLCs included kind of bullshit? I think it's different because in this game, even the boat looks different. It's a sequel. The little boy is younger. He's like a true boy. Oh, no. It doesn't matter. It's a $20 game. I would never pay $20. No. I mean, after playing the second one, I would not pay $20 for that first one. No. Because it's going to be inherently worse. Yeah. Well, dude, it's kind of crazy. Oh, wow. But just looking at the videos of the first game, it almost looks like they had more features in it kind of. The graphics aren't as good, but the game looks like it might have been like more expensive. Oh, wow. Yeah, I'm looking at pictures now. I see what they're – it looks – yeah, okay. Yeah, this is crazy, though, because it's definitely not marketed as a sequel. No, it's not. I think if I had played Submerged first, I maybe would have appreciated Hidden Depths more. I don't even know if I would have, but I feel like – Well, only because – so the thumbnail I'm looking at is the one where the whale is coming out of the water. Yeah. And you see the, like, overgrowth on him? Yeah. On it. And then when we go over to Submerged Hidden Depths, every animal is, like, 100% plant growth. So it's showing that, like – it's showing where it started versus where it ended, which is what we played. So I like that kind of stuff, where the environment's telling more of the story. But other than that, it all looks just like a less polished version of what we played. I agree. Yeah. It's funny, though. It's odd that they made a sequel of that game at all because it doesn't really – I don't know. I thought that was really funny because I know that you like to play games in the order that they come out in. I do. And it wasn't Submerged 2. It was Submerged – it could have been Submerged 2 Hidden Depths. And then that's a bad marketing on their part because they probably could have gotten more people to buy it. Yeah, because we've done this a few times. Like, I – what would be one? Like, Inside versus Limbo. I heard and learned about Inside first. But then when I did some research for the podcast, I was like, oh, Limbo came out first, so I'm going to go buy Limbo and play it. And so, you know, yeah, so the marketing let them down. Yeah. So, okay, let me – I wonder if the first game was actually a Stadia exclusive – like a Stadia game. Well, it looks like it initially came out back in 2015, so I don't know how old Stadia is. Yeah, first game. See what it was originally released on. It was – it was iOS. Microsoft, Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, iOS, and Switch. That kind of lends to something I wanted to say about this game. I know we're kind of jumping hard down into the gameplay of it. Right. This game felt to me – I would describe it as either like a – God, I'm such an asshole, dude. I feel like I would describe this game as feeling like a college student's very well-polished, like, end-of-the-year project. Or – Hidden Depths for the first one. We're talking about Hidden Depths? Yeah. Or like a fucking mobile game. It felt like a mobile game to me, like something that was just iPhone or whatever. So it coming out from Stadia Games made sense to me. And then seeing that, like, it was on all these platforms, including iOS, kind of makes me wonder if the original game was essentially made – Submerged was made by a team of former Bioshock developers. Really? Again, very kind of strange that they picked, like, cities out in the middle of the water. Like, you know, people just love – they love getting wet, man. You can find them at patreon.com slash 321backlog. We're going to start with this episode and all game discussion episodes moving forward. Also, while you're tracking down our extra content, consider giving us a follow on our socials, 321backlog on TikTok, Instagram, and whatever Twitter happens to be called this week. All right. So to recap, check out our Patreon, our socials, and we'll get back to the episode. Well, let's talk a little bit more about – before we get into, like, how we took the story and gameplay and all that. Just to run through, how did you like the graphics overall? It was a good-looking game, dude. It really was. It was – playing it on my phone, it looked perfect. Like, I don't know. I don't know. It was visually very appealing. The water was cool. I wish you could – there was – if you tilted the camera up, you could look down into the water a little bit. And I only did that, like, near the end of my playthrough. But it was visually a very nice game. I liked the colors when it got dark and the flowers would light up. And, like, I'm a sucker for a dark room with bright colors in it, like neon-resistant colors. That looked really good. It was graphically – I don't really think I have – I mean, I put an 8 out of 10 on it. But I guess for the art style, I guess you could say it was a 10 out of 10 because it looked good and the frame rate was solid and everything. Would you agree? I think the – because of the verbiage you used, I think the art style was a 10 out of 10. The how it was executed graphically, I think, was a little bit lower. So there were some times where, like, water's tricky, right, to animate and make digital. So some of the collisions it had with some of the environment was a little off. I didn't notice it. You know, if I had some issues with – and I think the bigger your screen gets that you're playing this, you're going to notice these things more. But, you know, when you're looking at the characters and their hair moves or their head moves, it just looks like they're wearing a hair helmet. Or the jewelry and stuff on her wrist just collides with things, little things like that. You're right. I'm going to give it a fucking 7. But, no, I think the art style was really, really good. It's just some of that stuff was a little bit difficult to execute. I mean, they weren't – Janky. They weren't using, like, Unreal Engine by any means. So it was a little lower in quality. Dude, were they, though? Because I think they might have used Unreal Engine for this. Were they? Can we find that out? Yeah. Jamie, can you look that up? I've been playing a lot of Little Nightmares, and that, I think, does. Okay, let's see here. Unreal Engine 4. Oh, dude. Well, fuck. Fuck. Scrap it. What were you going to say? Quick backlog builders for a moment. It'll probably be gone by the time this airs, but Assassin's Creed Valhalla is $14 on Epic. It's one of their deals of the week. I wonder if it would be the same price. Valhalla? Valhalla, yeah, the Viking one. I haven't finished it yet. Yeah, it's a pretty good game. I just haven't finished it yet. What? Yeah. Wow, very mixed reviews on Steam. They were starting to get back into what Assassin's Creed games are. Yeah. But they didn't want to hard pivot because they went Origins, which was good, Borderline. And then they got into Odyssey, which was a big 180, and they had to come back and make it more Assassin-y. So they started bringing in the Vikings, but it had a good mix of your typical fighter combat and then Assassin stuff. So they're trying to slowly bring it back. Who the fuck isn't a sucker for Viking mythology stuff? And I think they were also piggybacking off of the Norse mythology craze that's been happening over the last couple years. Marvel's got it. This has got it. God of War has got it. There's several TV shows. Uhtred, Son of Uhtred. So there's tons of stuff. I am Uhtred, Son of Uhtred. I am Uhtred, Son of Uhtred. Dude, I love saying anytime someone asks me to do something, you just give them the Uhtred response of, like, I will do no such thing. They're like, can you do the dishes? I will do no such thing. Oh, man. Such a good show. I liked that show. It was a little rough if you binged it. Some TV shows are not bingeable because it gets really repetitive. That one was Borderline. Destiny is All. Did the Borat. All right. Graphic stuff. Who is in our chat right now? What is that picture? I don't know. That was, like, one of the images that I saw on part of the webcam. Oh, my God. And I was just like, yeah, that. That can be our Jamie. I love posting pictures of people's faces on reviews for things because they just, they'll, like, I don't know. It's a thing I've always done. Oh, man. What would Tommy Tallarico do, man? Tommy Tallarico would ask about the sound quality of this game. It was fine. I don't know. The music was good, right? The music was okay. I kind of feel like they, again, this is somebody's college project right at the end of the year for graphic design. I feel like they bought a package of music from somebody. Right. And they got, like, three songs, and they're like, we got to fucking use them all, and we got to use them a lot, and we got to make it work, and it's going to be an eight out of ten. None of the songs were unpleasant. None of the sound quality was bad. It fit the relaxing vibe. Yeah. And that's about it. Yeah. I feel like there's, dude, I, yeah, there's so little to say about it. I kind of feel bad. And it's surprising because you can go on Steam, and you know how they'll have extras for games? You can buy the soundtrack for, like, $20. Yeah, I'll fucking get right on that, dude. Yeah. It's $12. And then the last thing before the actual game itself. Dude, I can't wait to talk about this. Voice acting. If you're a fan of Linda Garrett, the viola player, then you were the target audience for this. Who in the hell is that? She played the viola for this game. I don't know, man. I was reading the soundtrack here. Oh, my God. Dude, what? There were 32 tracks for this game. That's surprising. I honestly heard two songs. But I guess there was, like, maybe a little jingle here and there. I think it was supposed to be seamless. So, you know, if you're on the water, and then you go do one of the little puzzles, it's supposed to kind of ease into it, make you feel relaxed. Would you say you're now converted into being a huge fan of Jeff Van Dyke? All the time. That's the, yeah. So, voice acting. I'm excited about this. You better fucking hate it. I didn't like it. Dude, yes. So, I had the same problem with Ori and the Blind Forest. Yes, dude, I'm so glad you said it. If you said it was fine at all, if you had anything, don't say anything good about it. The people that were in the booth saying these words, quote, unquote, words and sounds in the recording studio, they sounded fine. However, the problem I had is that they're not speaking. I say English because I speak and understand English, but it's not that it was English. They're not speaking a language that I understand when they're in a world where I'm seeing buildings with English words on them. Yeah. That's where I was confused. I actually was annoyed. I'm not even kidding. I was actually annoyed. It was really frustrating because they're having conversations between the two characters and stuff, and if they had said, hey, they're speaking fucking Greek, just something, right? Yeah. I would have been fine with it because the story places them from a certain area. That's fine. It's the same thing with Star Wars and any non-Earth-based media. It just assumes that we can understand the common languages being spoken. We can all play pretend that they're speaking something that is not English, but for the gameplay, I would rather not have subtitles, and I would rather hear that instead of just like somebody going, you know, just gibberish. Okay, but was it gibberish? I don't know, and if it actually is a language, I'm going to cut a lot of this. No, it was a language. What was it? And this is why it annoyed me. It was so close to English. Did you not notice that? You know, I feel like I did see— It was like a heavy speech impediment or something. A hidden-depths language. Dude, it was like a heavy speech impediment on the English language. Like, I think there was a part where you get out of the boat, and Miku, that's the girl, tells Taku, that's the boy, to stay here, but she says like, It's like, it's almost English, and it's like, just fucking use English. Like, it doesn't— Let's see. NicheGamer.com, when starting Submerged Hidden Depths, you're presented with some exposition text and a brief cutscene, and then you're jumping right into the game. Two siblings speak in a made-up language, but I found it odd that they would occasionally say a word or two in English. Yeah. It was like, to me, it honestly sounded like— That's a problem I had. I feel like they— Like they ate a really hot bowl of soup the day before, and they both had like severe tongue burns, but they're like, we have to go on this journey. In some degree, they paid for a voice actor, for two of them. Just say the language. But they had to go through the extra development time and all that to make up a fake thing to just use an existing language. Dude, maybe they didn't pay that much. Maybe not. It doesn't have to be English. If they spoke Spanish or French, I wouldn't care. It's just, I need a real non-fantasy language. That's my argument. Maybe they did want English, and the person they paid, they just really got the—they went on Fiverr. They went on Fiverr, and they just took the cheapest bid, and the guy was like, I got that. No problem. And that's what the language they came up with. Okay, $5. Okay. I hated the voice acting, man. If the game didn't have sound in it at all, I would have preferred to just mute it. Yeah, I would have even been fine if they didn't do— if they went like more of a traditional Zelda route where at most you get some grunts and noises versus a fully fake language. Yeah, I agree. I think subtitles with no fake fantasy language is better than this fake, weird, made-up BS they had. Same thing with Ori. So Ori did it better. Ori did it better because it sounded like fucking Jabba the Hutt. It sounded like a thing I was somewhat familiar with. Familiar with as in I heard it before, but it wasn't a real language. I want a real language for a game that's being played in the real world. I don't know the lore of this game, but maybe they lost the ability to speak the language. Maybe their tongues are waterlogged. We don't know if they're even humans. Maybe they sleep with their tongue in the water and it absorbs a lot of water. And if they would have—I don't know. I still think it would have hit differently. No, sorry. I think it would have been the same argument if it was like, oh, this is set hundreds of years in the future. The English language is lost. Yeah, and they're descended from somewhere. But it's just that's so unnecessary for a game this size. It's a small little game. I think it just would have been better if they just didn't have voice acting, honestly. Or just, you know, speak the language. Speak a—I agree. I hate it. A language. It doesn't have to be English. I just say English because I speak English and I understand English. If they want to put Spanish and have subtitles, I'm totally fine with that. I might get a word or two that I know, but I just want something rooted in the real world because the person that's consuming this media is someone that lives in the real world playing it. Let's talk about the fucking gameplay. God damn it. My blood pressure just went up. Oh, man. Okay. Let's talk about the gameplay, dude. I put a couple notes in here about just things I generally noticed. There's a lot of collectibles in this game. Yes, there are. The gameplay mechanics. How long did it take you to realize that every single city landmark that you had to go to was basically in the shape of a clock? I think about when I got maybe 30% through. I think I had maybe four or five that I had gotten through. Then you realized I just had to go to this corner to get the next place. Yes. Okay. I knew you would figure that out. That's why I asked how long it took. Did you notice? Oh, yes. At first, I thought it was going to be like you come across them randomly, kind of like Raph, maybe a procedurally generated map. But no, it was just a static map. You just had to go in a circle. Did you have a favorite landmark that you went to? I think the ones I enjoyed the most were ones that had a mixture of— not a mixture, but it had multiple sections. I can't think of the names of any. I remember there was a cruise ship and a couple big buildings. But there's one in particular that— You had to get back in the boat. Yes. You had to get back in the boat, and you had phases of it. I liked those. I liked ones that showed immense height. The skyscraper ones were really cool because you would get on this little pulley system elevator and go really, really high in the air. Then once it finished loading, you could see a bunch of stuff on the map. That was kind of cool. I liked the ones that went really, really high. Once you start walking through them, it all kind of felt the same. Again, there was no combat. I thought there was going to be when I first started hitting those vine-looking people, which are like vine statues almost. It was a little funky. For setup, because it's not a super complicated thing, the world is being overgrown by plant life, but there's also a corruption. It's clearly a bad plant, right? Yes. I think the plant's fine. It's green and nice and all that, but there's a bunch of corruption that's kind of come through. You're essentially going around and unhooking the heart of this. I kind of looked at it like they were batteries or hearts almost. Dude, this game had no fucking story. It was very abstract. It had a story section there. I don't know why. I think this had more of a story than Limbo. Again, off of the gameplay. Did it though? Yes. It might have been a little weird, but I think there was something there. You've got characters that are having conversations, so you've got story in their relationship. You've got story in the world by the different animals and creatures that are in the world, so you're seeing what the life looks like. Yes, there is stuff there. I noticed every time that you grab – I called them seeds, right? Yeah. Every time you grabbed a seed, you were removing it from a technology, like human technology. Is this like we already lost the world because of our technological advancements, and then people are randomly trying to go back? Plants are what's keeping people alive or something, and then people were like, oh, let's plug in the telephone, see what happens, and use the seed as energy, and then by doing that, maybe that caused each city to fail. I don't know because there's no fucking explanation. I think the cities had already failed, and you had the survivors of whatever the world was, and I think they were using these seeds as like – I kind of thought of them as like batteries, but I think the constant use was causing this corruption, so they were trying to make it – how I took it is they were using these seeds as like batteries to power the tech they once had, and it was causing that like corruption to backfeed into nature. Yeah. So what she was doing was going and removing it and then severing that link to the corruption it had. After everybody was already dead. Yes. Something happened, and everyone kind of like got stuck in time because everybody was like these weird plant-like entities. They were plant-like, almost like – to me, I kind of interpreted it as like images. Like memories. Memories, thank you. Yeah. So kind of like when a nuke goes off and you can still see the person's shadow, it's like a big, bad thing. Hey, I don't like it either. A big, bad thing happened, and you have this like plant-life echo of what the person was. Okay. It was creepy too because when you walked up to them, they started moving slightly, which creeped me out at first, but I was like, oh, because I thought I was going to like start a combat encounter, but it was just like a little memory of them still living, which is kind of cool. So that's kind of the setup. Yeah. Did you get the collectibles? I got some of them. I got some of them. I found a couple that were, you know, every time you find one, it's like, oh, here's a journal entry, or here's a boat upgrade, which didn't do anything. The boat upgrade gave you a little bit longer time on your like turbo mode. Oh, that's it? Yeah. All right. All right, cool. Yeah, that was the only thing that was useful in the whole game, really. To make the game end faster? Yeah. But I noticed that I averaged like two diaries and three clothing items per segment about, and I also noticed that at some point I would see them and they were very clearly out in the open, and I would just ignore them because I felt very early on, I realized they're pointless. I wish the diary entries helped piece the story together a little bit, but they don't. They're just cool, and that's a huge flaw with this game because this game needs that. That's all that it, that's really all it needs is just a little bit of more story. A little, yeah, a little bit more, which can be done with diary entries and like static information that you can get through like menus and stuff. Yeah, it's a relaxing game. Turn it into like a visual novel combination. Yeah, for sure. I think the one thing I enjoyed the most and one comment I wanted to make on the podcast specifically was I liked the different animals. You would kind of come up and see. That I thoroughly enjoyed. It's funny. And I liked it because of Dungeons & Dragons because for those that are familiar with that game, I am the DM typically. When I run those games, I run them and all that. This game was giving me huge ideas for like a campaign area. So I started this game thinking it was like Raft and you were going to have one thing, and then it turned into like I'm getting like tons of ideas for just ideas to use for a completely different type of game. Cool. That I like. I wasn't inspired at all. Yeah, I was getting inspiration for Dungeons & Dragons for like plant animals and just like a whole area that would be really good for like druids and stuff that are very nature-based and you have like this corruption and stuff. That would be so cool for a campaign arc. That's what I pulled from this game. So thank you, Submerged. Thank you. Thank you, Uppercat Games. Any DMs that haven't played this yet, go play this game with your DM hat on and you'll get some really cool stuff. Do you remember how many aminals you found? Theo Vaughn, I found, let's see, there was frogs, penguins, dolphins, whales, bears, I think deer. I found 11. There were frogs. Did you say frogs? I think I said frogs. Squirrels. Bears. Bears. Birds. There were several. Toads. There was an alligator, I think. There were some birds. Yeah. I think there was multiple birds. There was like a pelican and something else. I don't know if I got all of them, but I got a handful. I got maybe 10-ish. Yeah. The clothing items and the diaries were a waste of time because they didn't, you actually, I think you could change your clothes, but who cares? Really? Yeah. Dude, I literally didn't even notice that there was a character in the game. If that makes sense, I feel like I was just, the game had so. You know what this game felt like? This game, sorry to cut you off, this game felt like one of those demos you get when you get a console. Yeah. Like if this was, if, Valve, listen up, you could like, this would be a great, hey, demo for your Steam Deck. It functioned great. There wasn't really any worthwhile content. It was just a thing to show how the controls worked. Oh, yeah, dude. There wasn't really any worthwhile content. Aside from the DM comments for Dungeons & Dragons, that's all I got from it. So, this would be a good, I would let my son play this because he doesn't need to know any deeper meaning or like find anything. Do you think your son would play it? Do you think he would actually care enough to finish this game? Probably not. That's what I mean, dude. There's no, there's no, you know what? Dude, I, I'm ripping this game apart and I'm sorry, Rick Van Dick, because I know you put your heart and soul into the soundtrack, but. It sounded fine. The only, that's not even, I don't think that's his name, dude. I think the only reason that I felt good about finishing this game was, one, I knew it was a short game, and two, it was easy enough that I didn't feel inconvenienced to play it. Yeah, yeah. Otherwise, I would, I think I would, like if, I would probably have returned the game very quickly if I had that option. I found 11 out of 20 animals. They were fine. There were 20? There were 20 animals that told you, every time you found them. I didn't mind the animals because they had a cool little animation and I liked it. It's like, what other animals are there going to be? Can I see a manatee or a walrus or something? There might have been a walrus, but yeah, that was that. I don't think, is there anything else to say? Can we talk about the ending? Yeah, so. Well, there's like a pre-ending. We'll back up a little bit. At some point. I was going to say something, I forgot what it was. What were you saying? Animals? Anyway, yeah. Oh, that's what it was. Sorry. I wonder if some of those animals were, basically you played mostly, like 90% of the game as the sister, but then some of these other smaller locations, you would pop out as the boy, as the brother, and kind of do them. I wonder if some of those smaller locations had more animals and more stuff. Again, it's more of the same, but for the animals specifically, because again, that was probably the coolest thing to look at. I wonder if there were more of those. There were 20 animals, and I think I found every animal in each of the main city areas, and then there were some birds and some other shit swimming around. So yeah, there probably was. There had to be some incentive to get off of the boat when it's not a main area. So at what point did you notice the big fucker walking around? Yeah, that's what I said when the sort of ending thing, because that's when you, I think it's like you're, I felt like that appeared 75% through the game. Yeah, I think I noticed it after like, well, you started getting these like dream sequences, which this really annoyed me, because there were some times I wanted to finish something. So like the second place you went to, I finished it up. You end the area, and it goes into like a dream sequence as if you had already returned back to your home base. It does the dream sequence, so it started introducing this big monster, but I had stuff I needed to finish and grab because I saw collectibles I hadn't got yet, so I had to go back and find that place again and go through it again. And that was really frustrating. So you always started from the same static starting location, and it was really annoying. So I wish there were, and I honestly don't remember if there was fast travel or not, but yeah, it was so frustrating, I didn't even think to look. But they started introducing this big monster from like dream sequences, and then I think after like three or four of them, I started noticing them out in the world. Did you mess with them at all? Yeah, I did, of course. And it just doesn't even... It doesn't do anything, yeah. It was cool. It was kind of cool how you would get, like near the end of the game, I noticed, it would like go wherever you were. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right, you're right. Yeah, that was the only thing, that's the only thing I can say good about the game. I liked that a little bit because it would, but again, it didn't do anything. And then, this is also dumb, you would go get the seat, and you're like walking. As soon as you like pick up the seat, it disappears. It's like it just clips out of the game. Yes. But it was cool that it would like, you'd be climbing the building near the end of the game, and it's like standing there staring at you, and you could see it off in the distance. Yeah, I did. I wish they did a little more with it, but I did like that. You know, I got through some... Something with it. When I started seeing that, I started getting... Have you seen the 2016 Disney movie Moana? Yeah, like Tafiti or whatever it's called. Yeah, Tafiti. That's what it started reminding me of. And this game came out kind of close. The first one came out kind of close to Moana. I wonder if they were getting some inspiration from that. I think Submerged technically came out first, but I was getting vibes from that. It had like that kind of aesthetic. Yeah, and I felt that way too. I've also seen that movie. Anyway, I was getting a lot of Moana vibes, and I'm curious to go watch gameplay maybe of Submerged like the original game because now I'm curious. So I don't know. I wonder if the first game had too much story and you're like, all right, for the sequel, we're going to dial it back all the way to fucking none. Maybe there was more story. I don't know. But the thing is, because there was... Maybe if you collect everything, you get like a little bit of a story. I'm guessing not. But even if you do, there is zero incentive to even acquire any of that stuff because one, like I said, I feel like the character just existed in the screen to carry my view around. The whole time I played this game, I was just looking for the next area to go through. I ignored the character's position almost entirely. So therefore, I ignored her clothes and stuff too. So that wouldn't have made any difference to me. There was no... They should have given you breadcrumbs of a reward to acquiring these extra pieces of garbage. Right. And then it would be a good reason to get more. I made a parallel between this game and Raft, which is kind of why I thought I would like this game. And again, as a walking sim, it does have kind of a walking sim portion of it. That part's fine. Just walking around, doing the puzzles, which are barely puzzles. It's still kind of relaxing. But because they kind of hinted at a story, I want it to be fleshed out, right? Looking at Raft, it had a lot of exploration. It wasn't relaxing at times. It was a builder, so there's different mechanics. But the story that it gave you, I think it gave it in a way that was very... It made sense, right? Right. I think this game could have taken a lot of notes from a game like Raft for how they portrayed the story. Because in Raft, there was, I mean, four, maybe five story locations. Like big story locations. Yeah, and that was it. And you got a decent story from only a couple locations. Submerged Hidden Depths gave you 12 places and told a very scattered story experience. And it was all over the place, very convoluted, very abstract story. And I think it could have been done a lot better if they took some notes from Raft. If we could just dial back a tiny bit. You said Limbo didn't have a story or whatever, but at least Limbo gave you the option to consider things. True, true, true. As a game without a true story, it provokes a lot of thought. This game really didn't. Yeah, that's true. Also, the name of the game, Submerged, you don't even go underwater. This game should have been called Fucking Cool. The world itself has been submerged. Yeah, but when I saw it, I thought we were going to go underwater. In a yellow submarine? Yeah, yeah, sure. There weren't even beetles in this game, and that's another thing I have to be upset about. It was called Submerged Hidden Depths. Only the ruins of the world were submerged, and the characters climbed. You didn't even go into the depths. Yeah, there was no submerging. There was just ascending. Miku and Taku, if those are their names, and the way they talk, their names were probably actually Michael and Taco. Michael and Tanya, Explore the Depths of New York City. Oh, my God, man. Okay, did you love it? Are you going to buy the original game? Nope. Nope. What if it's free to play it? No, I think I might skim a playthrough on YouTube, if one exists, for the original game. Because I want to see how much of a sequel it was. I want to go see, was there a big monster? Was there corruption? What was it? I'm just curious. The ending of the game was extremely predictable, too, right? From what I remember, it was like, all right. Yeah, I know. It was like, yep, all right. Now I can finally go to bed. Good night. Yeah, it was. I think this is the part that gave me big Moana vibes, because you finish the last place, and I think instead of a dream sequence, the big old monster is just looming over your home base, and you just get real close to him. And I think, didn't she touch him and the corruption went away or something, or it killed it or something like that? I can't remember exactly what happened. It exploded, and they were splintered to death. No, she passes out, and then Taco picks her up and brings Michael to the giant taffy, and then I think he just feeds her to it, the giant monster. It's kind of what it seemed like, and he just brings her to it, and then it becomes a huge tree. It becomes an enormous fruit that's stuck standing still. That was the only thing that was unpredictable about it, is that it basically became like a completely static object. I expected it to walk around as a healed, beautiful plant. Right, right, where, again, in Moana, Te Fiti is just it's corrupted, they remove the corruption, and then it would be a continuously moving thing, or not continuous, but it would return back to nature. I thought it was going to be something like that, but it ended up being kind of similar, like a bigger version of what we've been seeing, but with more branches and shit. Wait, so Michael and Taco, one cursed with a mysterious power that she wants to use for good. What was her mysterious power? She has flowers on her arm. What did she do? What was her power? I think it was a special connection to nature, because she had the innate ability, maybe like a passive ability to push back some of this corruption. Remember, as you were walking through these areas, the black ichor and stuff would melt away from these memories of people, and they would turn into a more blossoming, green-vined, blooming version of themselves. And when she went away, it would then revert back, and that corruption would take over. So she kind of had this weird natural ability to fight the corruption. That's right up there with doom stage two. Not really a cool power. Yeah, I think it was more of a passive thing. Then why was Taco so fucking skeptical about her? I think because every time she completed one of these sections, she was very physically worn out. So if I was to make some assumptions, I think after you finish a zone, the reason that you go into a dream sequence and go back is because you kind of passed out from exhaustion, and then Taco has taken you back to your own base, and then you wake up again after being so exhausted. That's why I like having these discussions with you, because I feel like that opens it a little bit more for me, and I don't think I have that thought process. Yeah, we're giving this a lot of shit, but they presented some things, and I'm going to break it apart, because I think there were some gaps in stuff. But no, that's how I kind of took a lot of that. Well, okay. Good job, Rick Van Dick. The soundtrack was fine. Dick Van Dick. Big old... Big old Rick. You got anything else you want to add, man? Uh... I don't know. I don't think so. Has Uppercut done anything else? They did a game, a few games. I did look at that earlier. They've done, I think this is their fourth-ish game. Really? Yeah. What the fuck have they been doing? Trying to find voice actors. I mean, yeah, we threw a lot on Fiverr for that. City of Brass. It's a combat game, first-person combat game, action-adventure, inspired by Arabian Nights from senior Bioshock developers. They did Epoch. Epoch is like a post-apocalyptic robot. Danger Dodgers, oh, Lord. City of Brass looks all right to me, man. A game called Contact Us, Support, Privacy Policy, and About. I haven't heard of those. Uh... I think Contact Us, I've played that pretty recently. The Arabian Nights game, City of Brass, looks cool. It actually looks kind of neat. It's a, I don't know, I don't know. It looks kind of like... It's going to be a knockoff Prince of Persia or something. But it's first-person. I don't know. It looks okay. It looks good enough. I would play that if it was free. I'm going to add that to my wish list, as a matter of fact. It's first-person? That's weird for a melee combat game. I don't like that. Well, it's from the senior developer of Bioshock. All right. Choose your adventure. I'm looking at a reskin of a Prince of Persia screenshot. I've got a female version, something else. I've got a genie, like knockoff Aladdin. Arabian Nights, brother. And then some skelly men. Skelly men. It feels like, yeah. But I feel like it's the exact same shade of blue that Disney uses. I've seen a lot of different iterations of genies and stuff. You can mix up the color scheme a little bit. But anyway. It kind of looks like you drink a potion in the game and you gain weird abilities. I'm removing it from my wish list now. Like Bioshock? Yeah. No, it has a very Bioshock feel. That's what I'm saying, yeah. And then even in some of the screenshots I see, the person looks like they have a sword in their right hand and then some other type of weapon, like a whip in their left hand. To some degree, every game is a reskin of another game. Except for Death Stranding, which was an entirely new genre of game. That's right. Kojima, we miss you. Probably our worst set of episodes because it was just me. That sounded a lot negative. You're a good guy. Don't you dare. I think that could have easily just been the first episode, and that was it. That's all we needed. Sorry, man. I've gotten a lot of people that really enjoyed it. Really? Have you been talking to people? No. I've been trying to hawk our podcast as much as I can. I think I need to try, but it's difficult for me to do it work. Yeah. So anything you want to add about this game? I think we can kind of wrap up our discussion on this. I think overall it was a fine, handheld game, relaxing game to not really dive too deep into their quote-unquote story. It was a good game to kill time. Yeah. So speaking of killing time, so we need to talk about our next episode, and we are going to be going into spooky season. Yeah. So we've had a little discussion going back and forth. I think we can easily announce our next game, and I kind of want to give a teaser for the game after that and then leave the game that's going to be released basically on Halloween. We're going to save that one for a little bit. Okay. So our next game is going to be Little Nightmares, and our follow-up game to Say Spooky, we're going to have three spookies for the month of October. Our second one after that is going to be We Happy Few. I'm giving you two because we've got one small game and one that's a little longer that will give everybody time to jump in. And shiver. Shiver around and get really primed for Halloween and spooky times. Until next time, guys, that's going to do it for us. Thanks so much for listening. That wraps up our discussion for Submerged Hidden Depths. If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know with a thumbs-up, a comment, or sharing with your friends and family. If you're able to do so, play along with us. We'll post upcoming games to our socials and what games are up next at the end of each episode. This has been 321 Backlog. We'll see you next time. Bye. You can connect with us on any of our social media pages and by sending us an email at 321backlog at gmail.com. Until next time. Backlog
