Welcome to Big Game Hunger, a show where me and a guest craft the big next game every episode.We'll be taking three random ingredients and blending them together into one incredible game.I'm Jenna Stieber, and I crave content.
And I'm joined by Nick Lives.Nick, who are you, and what do you have a hunger for?
Hi, I'm a game developer of 10 plus years now.And what do I crave? I crave horror games and schlocky B-movies.Like Troll and I'm looking at my shelf here and all kinds of goofy stuff.
That actually makes a lot of sense because the games that you make with Night Signal Entertainment definitely have, I don't wanna say a troll vibe, kind of a troll vibe, kind of a throwback self-aware troll vibe.
Oh, yeah.Oh, yeah.No, I mean, I definitely just love the energy, the very creative energy that goes into a lot of these, like, schlocky, as some people call them, wet puppet movies. There's just such a fun quality to them, and I deeply admire that.
And so they play a big part of what's on our mind when we're making games.
I do miss the like gloopy era of horror.I feel like so much modern horror is about like emotions, which is fine, or technology, which is fine, but not goopy.I really, I do kind of miss that era of like, it's just gonna be nasty.
There's just gonna be stuff and we're gonna call it the stuff.It's gonna gloop everywhere.It's like, yeah, I like that.I like the gloop.
Love the gloopy, yeah, the very focus, the big focus on just seeing what they can do effects wise with physical stuff and messing around with different styles of effects.It was very experimental era in addition to being very juvenile.
But I like both aspects of that. I agree.
Do you have a favorite movie of that era?
I think so.I mean, I think the one that I go to the most for overall hits a lot of different good notes for me is The Fly.The Cronenberg's The Fly.
That one. It manages to still hit the the kind of emotional like depths that we get for more modern like horror, I guess, elevated horror.Sometimes it's called I hate that term.
But yes, that's a different topic altogether.A whole different topic.
But The Fly is just a great combination of all kinds of stuff I like in movies.And it has a lot of, like, deep personal meaning to me as well.
And so it just sort of, yeah, hits all the notes while still being a goopy creature feature at the same time.And I love that about it.
Yeah, Jeff Goldblum's performance in that is so deranged.
Geena Davis also doing such good work kind of like trying to center him and that whole energy.Just the combo of the two I think is incredible.
I often think there's one scene where he's like mid, he's like pretty far I think along the transformation and parts are starting to fall off and he's talking to Geena Davis and he just like spits up a bunch of his teeth and he looks at her and he's like, well, that was disgusting.
He's just so matter of fact about the most insanely gross thing.
That is such an incredible movie.That's a great poll.Can I ask, you do not have to answer this, what is the personal meaning that you feel in The Fly?Were you turned into a fly?Can you talk about that?
Yeah, I was turned into a fly once upon a time.That has a lot of resonance with me.No, so my dad, he's diabetic.
And so I grew up in a very, it was a very weird household because he would frequently go into these kind of diabetic episodes and kind of turn into like a different person during this time.And It's just sort of, I don't know.
Also over time, it's taken its toll on his health.And so he looks less like the person I knew, the more time that goes on.
And I just very much relate to Geena Davis in that movie, where every time you visit this person you knew, they sort of look very different.And you can tell that they're, you know, not doing well.
And that their, their, their mind is kind of going with their body.It's sort of, it's sort of a, yeah, it's a very, like the, the, the older I get, the more I relate to that movie.
In that sense, just because it's, it just, it keeps coming back as a, as a very, as a very, as a very strong metaphor for
sort of watching someone go through something like a degenerative illness or similar, you know, it can be interpreted into a lot of different things.
But like in particular, like one of the scenes that I thought was really funny, took on a more, like a sadder
tone when I experienced more of this stuff with my dad, where he starts going off on this wild rant in the movie at one point about insect politicians.And it's one of the weirdest monologues that he goes through.
And Geena Davis's reaction to this incredibly weird monologue about how I want to be the first insect politician. is crying.She starts crying when she hears that.
And I absolutely get that now, where you see somebody start going off what they think is some really revelatory thing, and you can just see that their brain is broken now, or you can just see that they are going through something that you cannot fathom.
And it's, yeah, that's a very, that's a very sad scene now.And it used to make me laugh because of how ridiculous the lines were.But they kind of have to be ridiculous to like paint that picture.
The true horror of The Fly.I mean, there's so many layers.I think that's one of the reasons why it's such an incredible movie.But you have these two sides with these two characters.And Gina Davis can see it all from the outside.
She's our perspective and can see this degeneration and is powerless, powerless to do anything about it.She can't even break through to make Jeff Goldblum understand that what's happening is not normal and it's not okay.
And then the other side of it, the thing that I think is very harrowing, is that Jeff Goldblum is just like, yep, this is just a thing happening to me right now.And it's like, no, my dude, you're turning into, like, you're turning into a fly.
Parts of your body are falling off.You need to be more concerned about what's happening.And his, like, inability to understand
That what's happening is not normal and not okay to me is like the really horrifying thing about this movie where it's just like you can't you can't penetrate that you no matter how much you care sometimes that you can't penetrate that sort of.
lack of awareness that a person has.And that's just like, so good and so upsetting.
Yeah, it's like his immediate instinct is to take like a scientific analysis of himself to step away from what's actually happening to him.
I guess it's sort of like a weird like mental block he has, where he's not really going to approach it like it's happening to him.He's gonna approach it like he's a scientist.
God, what a great movie.Wow.I mean, I'm gonna have to, I'm just gonna have to watch it.I'm gonna have to rewatch it in this spooky month.
I feel like that comes through a lot in the games that you make because I think Home Safety Hotline, in particular, there's definitely some goopiness, but there's also like that kind of like, FMV almost aspect to it.
Sometimes literal FMV, but also just like the sort of like really, really physical, really feels very like real world and very impactful with the structure of the game.Do you feel like that's inspired by your love of this kind of movie?
I think one aspect of it that is more on the personal side for me for Home Safety Hotline, even though we like to portray it in a very comedic horror fashion, just because that's, I don't know, that's just our default way of, that's just my default way of writing.
I love it.Tonally, I love it.Yeah, it's great.I love it, truly.
is but it's definitely like a reflection of, of, of all the, of all the weird phobias that I have.And, like,
It's a reflection of what I see in the genre that inspired it, which is this online horror video genre, sub-video genre called analog horror.And although there's a lot of people who argue internally about what that label actually means,
What it means to me and what I got out of it when I started watching these analog horror videos on the internet is that they are a reflection of basically the fear of learning.They're about the fear of learning.
Learning about how dangerous the world is for the very first time.
Because a lot of them reflect educational videos.A lot of them emulate emergency PSAs on TV about weather.And all those are very big. the moment that you learned how dangerous the world is when growing up and what a shock to the system that is.
And so that's one of the reasons why if you dig too much into it, a lot of home safety hotlines internal logic starts to fall apart.
And in terms of why the data is structured this way for employees and things like that, why it unlocks day to day, in addition to for it being video gamey, it's also just because to get that emotion across, I think you need to learn little bits and pieces about how dangerous the world is and have a lot of allusions
more dangerous things that you haven't learned about yet, just because that's kind of how I remember feeling about it.And I still feel this to this day, because to this day, I will still learn a new thing that freaks me out.
And it will drive me up the wall.I was sick one time, maybe last year, I think I got sick. with COVID and I was using the, I forget what it's called, that like VapoRub to like kind of open up my sinuses a little bit.
And they have that instruction on the VapoRub that's like, put it on your chest, don't put it near your nose.And I was curious about that and I'm like, why can't I put it near my nose?Because I remember that rule and I remember
specifically that my parents always ignored that rule.They always just put it on their upper lip anyway, because they're like, well, I want it to get right to my nasal passages right away.And so it was like a house rule that you can ignore that.
Okay.And I looked up why you can't do that.And it's because if any of it gets in your nasal passages and you inhale any of it, you'll, I mean, you'll, I guess if any of it gets in your lungs, you'll die.That's, that's the short of it.
And it's like, oh, that's a big rule.Like that's not a, That's not something you want to ignore.Absolutely don't put it.That should be in big red letters.You will die if you put this near your nasal passages.Wow. Make us all asphyxiate.
Yeah.Some rules are like, don't do this because it will have a worse result.Some rules are like, it will kill you if you do it.And the fact that there's not as much clarity on that as there should be is wild.Wow.So do you put it on your test now?
Oh, yeah.Absolutely. Well, I don't even use it now.Now I'm just scared of the substance, but that's more due to the way that I have approached things with phobias.When I get a new one, I just tend to play avoidance with it for as long as I can.
Add it to the list, okay. Are you familiar with the game genre?It's relatively emergent in horror games called Anomaly Hunters.
No, that sounds right up my alley.
It's super, super is.This is a very, very new genre.I think it's only emerged basically in the last year and it's super, super indie.And I feel like Home Safety Hotline is not, it's very similar overlap.
The concept of an Anomaly Hunter is that it's sort of like PT where you're like going through like a looping area. and the area remains static except for weird things.So you'll go through the hallway once and it'll be like, this is fine.
And then you'll go through it again and there'll be like a missing door or there will be a person there who's gonna attack you or like the paintings on the wall will be different.
And the anomaly, you're searching for the anomaly and trying to pick out what is different here.It feels like conceptually there is some overlap with like home safety hotline and night signals where it's like,
you're trying to figure out what weird thing is out there and learn about it in a way that is hopefully going to make you safer and able to defeat it.
I was just, I was curious if you had had any contact with this or if you have any thoughts about like the sort of hallway horror emergence that came after PT or anything like that.
The hallway horror thing is interesting.I didn't know that this genre kind of combines those two.I actually didn't ever get to play P.T.
So that one, it's been completely secondhand that I've gotten to see all of the influence that it's had over horror games since and all the imitators it spawned and all the...
I mean, I think it's even responsible for other waves in AAA horror as well, because I think Resident Evil 7 clearly took a lot of inspiration from how big PT was at the time, and its approach to puzzle design and stuff. Yeah.
But honestly, it was a relief to play Night Signals and Home Safety Hotline because I was like, oh, I'm not walking down a hallway.Thank Christ.Thank God Almighty.
I can only do so many laps around a suburban household hallway before I'm just like, I don't want it.I just want something different.
There was actually a period, I think it was like right before I made Night Signal, where I thought, oh, I can't make horror games.
And the reason for that is because all the stuff that was like really hot at the time was stuff I was just deeply uninterested in playing or making.I've since kind of come around on a lot of the stuff from that era.
Like, I've been playing more stuff from the post-amnesia era of kind of non-combat-oriented horror.But I felt like the horror had kind of moved on without me at that period.But since then, I don't really feel that.
There was a, yeah, there was this period of time where it was pretty much everything was like amnesia, Outlast, or PT clone.And it was a bit exhausting as somebody who was like, I want to shoot zombies on occasion.
Yeah, I kind of want a little action.I want a little bit of action.Kind of want a little action in my games.
Yeah, I feel like the horror is starting to move on and I'm relieved and I'm glad that you're a part of it moving forward with different stuff.Nick, are you ready to head to the ingredient list and see what kind of prompts we get?
Absolutely.Yeah, let's see.
All right.I'm going to roll my 3d20 and see what adjective premise and type of gameplay we're going to make a game based on today.Okay, okay. Okay, okay.Our words are, our adjective comes from a Patreon subscriber, Josh Kloss.Thank you, Josh.
I hope I said your last name right.It is the word lilliputian.
Oh my goodness.Okay.That's a $10 word.Okay.Lilliputian.All right.
That was the place.I think the word itself just means somebody who's really small or quite tiny compared to other things.They were the people that like tacked down Gulliver's Travels.There was like 80 Lilliputians and they captured him.
Oh, that's the name of the little people from Gulliver's Travels.Okay.
Yes. Our premise comes from a former guest, Laser Weber.Thank you, Laser.And it is time travel without space travel.So staying in the same space, presumably, but going backwards and forwards in time.
And our type of gameplay comes from another former guest, Jeff Moon.And thank you, Jeff.And it is text-based.
That's quite the combo there.Okay, so... Should we dive right into it?Are these the three ingredients?
Let me ask, we could potentially swap one of them out for something that's on the Grant Howitt dagger dart board.
What I'll say right now is that there's only one premise left, but we have quite a few different adjectives and gameplay types if you want to try swapping one of those out.
Uh, no, let's just go for it.Let's, I say, let's just figure it out.We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll figure out what we're given here.Let's, uh, so.Go for it.Do you have something off the bat?
Um, no, I'm just, I was just going to start naming off influences and we can kind of build something out of that because.
Well, let me ask you something first.
Would you consider Home Safety Hotline a text-based game?
I would think so.I guess maybe not in the purest sense of no pictures allowed and stuff like that.If we're considering text-based, like pure Zork text-based, then no.But yeah, it's in the region, the general region.
Do you think would you rather do a zork style classic pure text?You light a torch head north that style.
I love I love that genre.So I'm gonna say yes, absolutely it would be and that's that's even better because then we can we can let people Have to they have to extrapolate things from the descriptions.They're given and stuff.So I
Already I think what's what's what's coming to mind here is I have to I still have to figure out how to work the little potion into it I, you know, in the time machine, in H.G.
Wells' The Time Machine, his time machine is basically this big thing he just sits in, right?He sits in in his pajamas, and he just goes forward and backwards.
And so, I mean, like the initial, I don't know if it's, I don't think it's in the original book, but in one of the adaptations by like, one of his descendants.
He's trying to stop somebody he loves from dying, and he can't, which is a decent enough conflict, I guess, for someone who can't move out of their seat.I don't know how you would influence it.
I mean, time travel without space travel, we can throw things. We could.
Okay, maybe we can have a long pole.Time traveler with the big stick.
Trying to figure out what's in arms length at arm at arm's length. And if you're tiny, that would be even worse.So that makes it extra difficult.I don't know why you'd be tiny in this scenario.
Well, OK, I've got a pitch.So humanity has, over the years, tended to get larger.Like people who are born now, on average, are taller than they were born, on average, 100 years ago.And presumably, that keeps going infinitely.
So probably Jesus was like a foot and a half tall. I think probably in another 1,000 years, another 2,000 years, I think probably we'll be like twice as tall.So maybe how you tell how far in the future you are is based on how much bigger...
You don't have clocks.You just have the relative size of people to go off of.
Yes.Yeah.Yes.And you'll never be positive if you're meeting somebody who's just like seven foot tall, but they are like a modern day basketball player.And you're just like, oh, I must be in the year 2525.
And they're just like, no, I play for, oh, God.Uh-oh. any baseball basketball team.I cannot come up with a single one.
And you just have to be like, oh, OK, maybe there's like some context clues you have to reap to get a better context of where you are in time.
That's a good way to, yeah, I'm trying to, I'm just, I'm like trying to figure out how we even arrive at this, yeah, very bizarre premise.
We need to introduce people to all the strange things that you would expect in a game like this, of seeing people being really tall, which it does tie in really well, the tall thing, I mean, although inversely, it ties in well with the H.G.
Wells story again, because in the future, H.G.Wells imagines everybody's really short, so we just have to flip it.He imagines everybody turns into these really tiny people.
I didn't know that.I haven't read the original time.I'm gonna have to now, clearly.Is everyone really tiny in the future?I had no idea.
Yeah, he imagines that humanity divides into two different subspecies.
It's based on the people, there's this really smart group of people, well, not smart group of people, he considers them, they're very dumb, but they think they're very smart, but they're the short people, I forget what they're called, and then there's the Morlocks, who are the very tall subterranean people.
And yeah, so he's got some, He's got his weird evolutionary theories about humanity, which I guess ties in well with the small people, big people thing.So if we just decide we're underground, Morlocks, you know, they're big.
and they're in the future.
We could also do something where it's like there are like multiple groups of people and one of them are really tall and one of them are really short.
And so you can determine what time you're in based on like who has control of the land that you're on.That is also an option.
And you can go wild with it too with the text-based thing.You could go into all kinds of weird descriptions of forms of humanity that are terrifying to behold and all these different ways go further than H.G.
Wells did and keep going with other weird descriptions of people.Kind of like that book, I don't know if you've ever heard, I forget what it's called, All Tomorrows, I think.
Oh, I'm familiar with it.
Where it's it's it's another weird extrapolation of like different Evolutionary paths for humanity, but this time if we were being selectively bred by aliens, I guess so they turn us into all kinds of weird animals Interesting so you could definitely kind of melt those two and it'd be a game about
witnessing all these horrors of the future.I'm trying to think though, yeah, that goal-wise, I don't, man, it is definitely very hard to be stationary in a game.Yes.
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I think something that might help define the game is whether we want it to be like, because there's two different HG Wells versions that you've pitched, sort of you've pitched, I guess people in the past have pitched and you've reiterated, which is, I need to save somebody within my timeline,
And so I'm just traveling within my specific lifespan.So this is a 60-year span, basically, that you're traveling in to do something very personal to yourself.So we could have a personal goal like that.
But we could also do a much broader, like, I've got this 4,000-year span.I've got this 10,000-year span of time that I could travel.And I'm trying to do something historical.
Like maybe, okay, how terrifying would it be if you were like, I'm just gonna travel by a hundred year increments to the deep history and the deep future.And you're like, oh, yep, that's, you know, those are mud farmers.
Oh, yep, that's a guy in a suit of armor.Oh, yep, there's somebody with a cell phone.Yep, there's another human.Oh, there aren't humans anymore.There's just these weird, horrible monsters.Hey, what happened?
Having to like dig down into that mystery, I think is really a fun concept of like something clearly dramatic has happened.
And we could do something fine, like you go forward and there's no people anymore, and there's been an apocalypse or something.But I like the idea of going forward and there's a bunch of goopy monsters.
Yes.No, obviously that appeals to me as well.So no personal goal.We're scrapping that.It's got to be more broad.Maybe you're somebody who is a historian, but for the future.And so you're trying to just piece together how
how these different eras connect with each other because maybe you can only skip forward in increments of time.You can't go too granular.You only skip forward a hundred years at a time or something like that or a thousand, whatever
I guess something like increments of a billion would make more sense for weird evolutionary paths of people.Yeah, potentially.Depends on whether it's a societal thing or whatever.
But for the goopy monster thing, that's definitely a very fun thing to try to research and vary within the...
reading-based, text-based, that's like the strength of text-based stuff is vivid descriptions and, you know, if you're sitting and playing a text-based game, we can assume that you do like reading, and maybe you like writing, so perfect, you're a historian.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.I like that.
I mean, maybe like, yeah, I guess it would be like, maybe like a bit like those, you know, maybe like that, that Lucas Pope game that I still haven't played.
So I may be referencing Obra Dinn, where you're, yeah, you're, you're piecing together things.And so maybe the text based interface has just sort of a rough, like assembly of different options for paths you think that humanity took and why.
And you're just meant to piece together a timeline of what you think happened until the end of time. where humanity is extinct.So how did humanity become extinct is the mystery that you're trying to answer.
And you can chart the course through all the weird insane amalgamations of humanity that they turn into and drive themselves extinct as a result of.But you you know, tracing propaganda signs.
And maybe it'd be, you know, it'd be a lot of like exploration in the sense of just looking around you.Like, so you know, like, you see, like, like, you'd get like a basic description, when you land somewhere.That's like,
Around you, you see a million dinosaur-like creatures with human faces.And there's a bunch of propaganda everywhere.And so then your inclination would be, read the propaganda.What does the propaganda say?And it says, like, long necks, get
Get, don't get broke if you, you know, it's just something, some weird internal long neck versus short neck dynamic.
I love the idea of having to write long neck dinosaur propaganda.What a fun challenge.
That's going to be the most fun day in the writing room for this game, is sitting down and cranking out a bunch of fucking stegosaurus, brontosaurus ass propaganda posters.
And you're like, oh, I understand.Yeah, yeah.So they all have long necks right now because all the short necks got, you know, selectively bred out of existence or whatever after, after, after short necked Hitler.
rose to power in the last period of time, which we only got to see the beginnings of.
We got to see in the previous 50 years or whatever increment of time that we were able to travel, we just see a little short-necked Hitler not get accepted into art school or whatever.And we know how that turned out.
Okay, I love, first of all, I love the idea that this is a game not about like changing the future, but accepting the future for what it is and as a historian trying to understand it.I love that.I love that structure for a game.
In general, I just love those sorts of games that have come from like Obra Dinn.So I think that's really fun.I love, I think this works really well for like, I'm picturing it, we're in a, the time machine style time machine.
And from a text-based standpoint, you can look left, forward, or right.And maybe there are things to the left or right that you could potentially grab, like books, or posters, or things like that.
Oh, sure.Expand your repertory more if you're near something, yes.
Exactly.I'm picturing maybe at the start, you can only move forward and backward in 1,000-year increments.But maybe you get halfway through.Maybe this is too Metroidvania-esque.
Halfway through, you find a chisel, and you can pry up one of the zeros off your time machine.And now it can do increments of 100 instead of 1,000.And so you get a little bit more control over when you can bounce around.
Oh, yeah.No, I like that.Or maybe you go into a future where time travels much less regulated than when you left.And you go, oh, OK.I'm going to go off of your rules from now on.
I love that.Yeah, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.When in the long-necked dinosaur future, do as the long-necked dinosaur time travelers do.It's a basic rule of time travel.
I do like the idea of there being, of it opening up with different, there's almost like an escape room quality to that too, of being able to take these things to different eras and find out more about them.
Like you find like a weird, you know, what do you call it?Maybe like a weird obelisk of language that you have not come across yet.And then you have to go back in time to find which civilization actually used that language.
And go, oh, this civilization made a comeback, apparently.This long dead civilization.
Maybe you could make your own Rosetta Stone.Because if you can travel back in time, you could make a document that tracks all of the language and then just leave it there.And then, well, again, I guess that's potentially changing the future.
But then you can use that.If you find a stone fragment with an obscure language in the future, and you're a historian that can time travel, you can just go back and be like, oh yeah, hey, can you read this for me?Hey, what does this say?
What does this say?We didn't have the tools for this back then, but you, dinosaur man, can you read this for me, please?
All right, I love that structure.The structure is that you are trying to complete your history book about what happened.Does that mean you're from the far future, or the far past, or from a different planet?Who are you in this situation?
I'd like to think you're, just because it's goofy to me and fun, I'd like to think you are indeed from the 1800s.You're the original H.G.
Wells-esque time traveler in his pajamas who just has this weird out there goal internally of they want to chart the course of humanity, but they don't want to disturb So that's why they're there for the, I will not get out of my time machine.
I'm an ethical time traveler.I will only record.And that is their thing.And so yeah, you're this goofy Victorian person in their pajamas, I think.I think that's who you are in this scenario.So you get to see modern times through their lens.
which is kind of fun.They have these goofy ways of describing things, maybe, which is another layer of abstraction for people to parse through.Like, what the hell is a Diddley Pump or whatever.Oh, yeah, that old Britishism for shoes.Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I love the idea of you hopping forward to the year 3000, and you find a book of slang, like Victorian slang, and you're flipping through it, and it's like, absolutely not.None of this.I don't know.No, absolutely not.
None of this.That is just.
This game seems like it's gonna have a little bit of horror and a lot of humor Wow crazy I can't believe we've arrived here I Like it quite a lot.
I'm okay.So the Lilliputian aspect do we feel like we've We've locked that in pretty good.There's going to be different heights for different people.
Yeah, there will be... We'll have a variety of heights and things, but little... Yeah, maybe that's an initial mystery that comes up, is the shrinking of humanity or the enlargening of humanity, and then it turns into more bizarre things.
I mean, I don't know.Yeah.Does it feel like we betrayed Lilliputian as a theme?
No, I think we crushed it.I do love the idea that if you look at the next million years of humanity, it's like a wave in heights where there's like an upper peak where humanity's like tall, gross, not hot at all.
It finally turns back towards the short kings and then the short kings reign. And it's just sort of, we get this sort of loop of humanity shrinking and growing.That's what I want for humanity.I don't want us to, the numbers go up.I don't like that.
I don't like that about anything, including heights.
That's why global warming, it will cause some bizarre, some bizarre thing where the Earth's gravity gets harsher and then that's where everybody starts shrinking again.And so it becomes this weird thing.
I would love it, okay, so not, okay, yes, yes.A million years in the future in this game, you come across people, they're not small in every direction, they're as wide as modern humans, but- They're just very flat.Yeah, like a crushed can of Coke.
And you're like, oh, I should get out of the time machine at this point.And then you're like, oh my god, the gravity is too strong.
becomes a very intense, bizarre scenario.And that's before we get to the inverted people.That's a completely different story.Gravity goes, people's head, they become upside down.
We start being able to think better when all the blood is going just to our heads.
Yes, exactly.It's all focused down there. We evolved better circulatory systems.So being upside down makes you smarter and not dead.I think this is a really fun concept.And it's okay.So it's all text-based.We really crushed it.
Sometimes I feel like we have such a clear vision in this show that we're like, yeah, this is the game.You could sit down, you, not you, somebody hypothetically could sit down and write this game up.
They could whip something up.Yeah, this is a pitch document worthy thing.Publishers, listen up.Everybody go and fund the new time travel text adventure.
You're right, Nick.We should name it.Now that we're going to start pitching it, we should come up with a good name for this game.
good name for this that would encompass the weird vibe that it has, I think.Because we can name it something kind of pretentious, like days of future, whatever, blah, blah, blah.But no, no, no, no.It would have to be like, I don't know.Let's see.
What are other words for future?
It could be something about descendants, because it's human descendants.
Oh, sure, sure.The descendants into madness.
That's pretty good.That's better than most of the puns that happen on this show.I don't hate that.
It turned into a pun after all. Send it into madness.It's pretty good.There you go.That's the off the cuff.That's before the marketing team gets a hold of it.And then they'll come up with the proper marketable title for that.
But that's what goes on the pitch doc. Because you've got to name the project something.Yeah.
It's a good taste of how clever the writing of the game is going to be.When they see it, then they're like, Descendants into Madness.
I can tell you, having named this show Big Game Hunger instead of Big Game Hunter, I can tell you a lot of people are going to ramp right over it and just think the game is called Descent into Madness.
And you're going to have to be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.You have to correct them with a Google search.
It's a very clever pun. No descendants.No, no, no, Yoshi.Now you've hurt the Google ability and now that's where the marketing team is going to be like, no, this is not, we're not naming it this.This isn't doing this.
This isn't, we can't name it that.My counter pitch to them is what if we call it Dim? Dim.That's what it's short for.Yeah, exactly.It would be Dim colon Descendants Into Madness.
Descendants Into Madness.There you go.Dim is a creepy shorthand title, too.Yeah.
Ooh, it's like, ooh, the future's so dark.
I gotta have lights on my time machine.It's the opposite of the future is so bright, so I gotta wear shades.But it doesn't really make sense without that context, unfortunately.Nick, is there anything you'd like to plug?
Yeah, sure.So our upcoming game, Please Insert Disc, which is a game about navigating the underbelly of a 2000s gaming console in an attempt to fix it and uncovering something else in the process, is on Steam to wishlist.
So if you'd go and wishlist it, that would be great.
It's going to be, if you have memories of turning on your PlayStation 2 and being horrified by the weird cosmic void that it greets you with, then you'll love what we're cooking up with Please Insert Disc.
And while you're on Steam, wishlisting, please insert this, go ahead and pick up Home Safety Hotline and Night Signal 2.It's spooky season, it's October, you need a very good horror game.
And I'll say, if you don't have a lot of stomach for like really, really overwhelming horror, like if you're not out here playing the Silent Hill 2 remake, whether that's good or not, Um, I would highly recommend giving these a try.
Because I think they've got such a good combination of funny and scary that really sort of breaks up that the dreaded vibe of some horror games.They're reasonably priced.They're both very fun.
Yeah. Bit Game Hunger is a part of the Multitude Collective of podcasts created and hosted by me, Jenna Stieber.If you enjoy this episode, don't forget to subscribe and also spread the word so other people can enjoy it as well.
You can visit my merch store at bit.ly slash jennamerch, all lowercase, or to support the show directly, you can subscribe at Patreon. at Patreon.com slash the Jenna.
People who subscribe every month, you get the opportunity to give us a word to put on the ingredient list, which is how we got Lilliputian from Josh Close.Thank you.I said your name a different way this time just to cover all my bases.
Help guide the podcast and our brainstorming at Patreon.com slash the Jenna.Nick, what's one word, adjective, gameplay type, premise, et cetera, that you would like to add to the ingredient list?
Fail forward. Sidekick and Cozy Horror.
Okay, tell me more about how you perceive Cozy Horror.
I think cozy horror should be pretty broad, but any horror game that would simultaneously also be comforting to play.Very low stakes.It doesn't have to emulate a cozy game necessarily, but it just has to be a low pressure horror.Okay, okay.
Can I offer one that I think falls into this category?Dredge?
Yes, Dredge is a perfect example.Yes, I have played Dredge.
I love Dredge.That one's great.It's undeniably horror, but it is sort of chill.It's like a fishing game, but then sometimes it's really upsetting.
Yes, it is.Funnily enough, I also made a fishing horror game back in the day called A Wonderful Day for Fishing.So I immediately had to pick up dredge when I saw that because I was like, oh, hey, more fishing horror.
What a good concept for a game.
Oh, yeah, exactly.In a very egotistical way.I had to pick it up.
And fail forward, are you saying that's an adjective?
Oh, I guess it's not quite an adjective.It's sort of like a premise.
Yeah, it's sort of like, you know, a game where failure is the way forward.A game where failing is the intended path to completion, something like along those lines.Oh, interesting.
I originally also phrased this as no game overs, so if that's a more useful or broader way to phrase it, that works too.But I think Fail Forward has a different vibe to it and it's catchier, so that's why I threw that phrasing on there.
I'll add no game overs as additional context if the person wants it whenever we roll it.But I think fail forward makes sense as a way of describing that.OK.And sidekick.
Let me ask you, is this one word like a hero's sidekick, or is it doing a cool sidekick?
No, one word like the superhero sidekick.Yes, so that would be, yeah.I mean, that one I think is pretty self-explanatory, basically.A game where you are a sidekick.
I love that.Okay.I think there's a lot of potential there.Excellent.These are three very good words.Thank you, Nick.
Thank you for being on the show.
Oh, yes.Thank you so much for having me.This was a lot of fun.
I enjoyed talking horror with you.It's nice to talk horror with somebody who loves horror.
Thank you for listening to Big Game Hunger.And don't forget to wishlist Descendants Into Madness on Steam.Release date TBD.
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