First Look: Without A Hitch | Design Club

[music] Good time zone, internet. Hello and welcome to Design Club, the only game design show on the internet that ambushes you.
Trust is everything. [laughter]
Perfect.
The overall laptop. I am your humble host will joined as always by my pal Jeff and also some new friends today who uh whose presence is the subject of our conversation. So uh gentlemen as as the as the the guest of honor for this episode would you please introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about what you do and uh why you're here.
Sure. Want to go first Dave?
Uh sure. I'm David Whitaker. I'm one of the co-founders here at Codename Entertainment. Uh I'm also the technical lead on on most projects here and I'm the technical lead actually overall project director on the game that we're going to share with you shortly.
Excellent.
Yeah. And I'm Eric Jordan and I am the

CEO of this fine company. And I guess we can reveal our shirts now. You know, [laughter] like the reveal code name
super. I did I did think about texting Dave last night as I was like she using my shirt and I'm like hey maybe we should both wear codeame shirts. I thought ah I'll just I'll just leave it and see what happened. But clearly we are of the same mind.
Excellent.
Seemed like the right thing to do.
He got the memo.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And who are you?
I was say I'm Jeffrey Zetkin. I'm the studio director of Extra Credits and Extra History. But more importantly for this, I am the game designer and residents have been game designing for over 25 years now, which is why Will and I run the weekly stream design club where we look at different games and analyze them and do let's plays and sometimes deep dive analysis or industry. But today we get one of my absolute favorite things which is to look at a game before it's done. It's in a state that's playable and and the development part of the cycle a lot of the time nowadays you rush towards

something a little bit playable so you can start tuning your game because it's really hard to you know tune your game before you can actually play your game. But still, there's a large amount of time between going from working on code to getting to even a rough alpha of where we're going to be like, "Hey, let's start playing. Let's start checking it out." And from there, you know, you play a while, you tune, and you get usually to that point, which is a beta, where you start letting more people in to get a larger test subject. the game today. And please correct me if I'm wrong, gentlemen. We're going to be looking at is in an alpha phase, meaning that it is still a lot most of the elements are there and playable, but there's still a lot left to do on figuring out how to get all the core loops in and make the game the most fun that it can be.
I think that's a fair statement.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the
I think I think those terms kind of with maybe indie dev
when you're doing indie dev and you're going particularly out to like steam and epic where it's much more fluid I think it's less defined than some of the kind

of history that you're sort of talking about Jeff. Um, so yeah, for us the big thing is, you know, getting it. We ran it internally with some play tests, you know, both in a bunch of different levels of the company and just checking it out. And then we've run one external play test and we were going to be starting another one today, but that got pushed to tomorrow. So, we have another one that's starting up tomorrow for people to kind of check it out and then we kind of look at all the feedback and comments and stuff.
Did we bump your play test back? If so, I am sorry. Not
that's all your fault. Yeah. Oh,
no. No.
Okay.
Oh, and fun fact, I met Eric about a decadeish ago when we were both at a off-site meeting for people working on D&D property games hosted by Watsi. Um, Eric and Dave, uh, your previous game that people would probably know you from if they play that kind of thing is Idol Champions of the Forgotten Realm, which has been an idol game running for, you were saying eight years now?
Eight years. Yeah,

eight years now. and is a fantastic game. If you like idol games, two thumbs up. I just checked. I have just under 20,000 hours in that game. So, um I played it a little bit. Would recommend
a bit.
So, yeah, Jeff, I have 42,315 hours in Idol Champions.
Awesome.
Which is somehow nearly double
what I've got here. 20 20 hours, [laughter] Dave.
You Oh. Oh, okay. So my 20,000 hours
20,000 hours like
casual. Yeah.
Casual. Yeah, that's right.
Okay, cool. So, um, Jent, let's let's begin, uh, with with something small.
Could you give us the elevator pitch for this game entitled Without a Hitch?
Sure. Um, so Without a Hitch is a co-op delivery game where you and up to four other players, you grab this package, you collect items, and you drive your

car across a chaotic, procedurally generated landscape. [laughter] Fingers crossed.
Yes. Um, and uh, and then you buy upgrades. You move through a day night cycle uh, in the game. Uh, up up to four. So, one to four players. one one to four players. Okay, cool. And uh what a coincidence that there are four of us. So when we play later, we'll be we'll be playing it with that max player count. Um
do that.
So
I think I think
well I say I have a question. Why this game? Like you guys have been working on a beloved idol game for a while as a dev studio. I know you're always looking for, you know, what are we developing next, but this seems a little different than Idol Champions.
Yeah. I mean, I think a big piece is it's not that we worked on an Idol game. We still work on an idol game, right?
Actually, fair.
Yeah. It's a game live service game.

Yeah. It's a live service game. There's new content that goes out in that game 52 weeks a year every single week of the year. Even during the Christmas holidays and all that stuff, there's always things that are kind of going out in that game. And we still doing all that. So, none of that has changed. And and before Idol Champions, we worked on a different game, uh, Crusaders Lost Idols, which was our idol game prior to Idol Champions. So, yeah. So, we've been doing idol games actively for over a decade. Um, and uh, it's nice to also do other games. And one of the great things about our studio is there's Dave, myself, and and Justin. Imagine Justin, hello, Justin being here, as the three owners of the studio. Uh, and so we don't we don't have investors, and we don't have we don't work with publishers. Um, and so we're like, let's do a different thing other than Idol Game, which we are actively still supporting. So, we're still working on that.
Yeah.
Yeah. And one thing that I might add on that is, you know, um we have I mean

throughout that entire period we've had other projects that we've been working on uh in the background just things that we want to try out that never saw the light of day. Um and all of them were quite different uh than well different than this and different from Idol Champions. Um and so this one is actually the first one that we've gotten to a state where we're actually looking at it. This is really cool. This is something one of those prototype projects that we had in the background that has actually um got to a state we're like, "Yeah, this is cool. We want to share it with people."
Yeah.
So,
and I think I was just going to say I think one of the things that I know when I've talked to a few people about this game, they're like, "Oh, but all of our other games that the public have seen are 2D games like Idol Champions." And we have one called Bushwhacker 2, which is a legacy Facebook game in Flash that we still have a small group of people and a very dedicated uh set of people playing that game. Um, but everything's been in 2D. And then people like, "Oh my god, you've got a 3D game." Like, where where did that come from? And as Dave alludes to, we've actually for several

years been working in 3D,
even longer than that actually. Like we've gone through three different projects that have Yeah.
They were all kind of in 3D.
Two that were Unity and one that was Unreal. Um
yeah. So yeah, just just to kind of experiment and it's because we really wanted to move from just doing 2D games to 3D games. That was like a strategic decision we made I think like five years ago.
We've been at this for,
you know, quite a quite a while.
Yeah. As a as someone who makes creative content, I could totally feel the the need to Oh, well, I'm doing this all day for for like the main thing, right? This is the thing that people expect. I I also want to do something different. I also want to like test the waters, figure out what's new, push the limits, try new skills, experiment in, you know, whatever my 3D is if I'm best known for 2D. And so that that totally tracks as like a a thing because I think
the the balance between uh game development as a creative endeavor and game development as oftenimes it is seen

as a purely business endeavor, right? Um particularly maintaining like a live service game. Uh, I think it's it's very creative and that kind of like need to stretch in a new direction makes a lot of sense to me.
And it's tricky though too because you get any number of studios that um will make one game that's successful that they worked on for say three or four or five years and everybody is so sick of working on that kind of thing, they're like screw it. We're going to throw out all our code. We're going to start on something completely different. And then there's a lot of cases of the studio crashing and burning because they're going from what they've spent a lot of time doing expertise in and are trying something new that they their studio and they may not have the right people for it or the right designers for it or the right engineering talent. And so like it's interesting to hear that you guys have done multiple like you guys are doing the responsible studio way which I respect a lot which is lots of early prototypes to see is it worth moving on to the next thing as opposed to like screw it we're out you know mic drop move on to next thing and suddenly being in trouble.

Yeah. And that's one of the things that honestly like having known Eric a while and David others as well like running a studio is very different from I want to go make a game in a lot of ways because one of the things you're thinking about when you're running a studio is I have all these people that work here. I want to make sure I can keep paying them. And that's that's a big thing.
It's a big thing. Yeah.
Yeah. So um you're delivering packages in a procedurally generated
back to the game. Yeah. In a world that's desert. Where did the where did the inspiration for this come from? Did you guys like have a big whiteboard like covered in ideas and like throw magnetic darts at it and it landed on package delivery desert procgen or did someone have an experience that led to this? Like what's why this of all the things you could have done?
Take that.
Uh yeah, I mean so that's a that's a really great question. Um, I think sort of early on when we were looking at it, we had um a significant number of of ideas that ended up narrowing down to

this. Um, in fact, an early a really early uh design that that that Justin and I had gone over was one that involved uh wizards going into a into a dungeon. And I think it wasn't maybe a couple of weeks after we decided to go a different direction that that the um another game of almost exactly that idea showed up. Um but uh we basically had an early um how would you call it? More like a design session, a brainstorming throw everything at the wall uh type session where we brought in um a number of members of the team, people who had played other other Friend slop games, people who had, you know, our our other um design team, art lead, and we all sat down and we just started writing down ideas. uh and we put them up on the board and then we started going through those and sort of organizing them seeing on sort of what things people liked, what things, you know, really resonated with people. Um and what things stood out as being different, something that wasn't something we'd already seen existing in in other games u in in this genre. Um and I think the one that stood

out that sort of led as the initial sort of seed for this was an idea that had been written down that I believe read Death Stranding with Cars.
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And we kind of we sort of started before that like one of the things in that session had been
because you you know you're looking if you're looking at friends slop games and we can kind of talk about obviously the words and what that word means at least is how we're using it. But in terms of friends slop games we're looking at you know the kind of usual suspects you know peak and you know going back to Lethal Company and games like that. And we were thinking like okay so how do we do something in that space? It's like a fun space to do something in. And we kind of settled on well what if we do something different around traversal because you know you you you think about that core loop that a player is going to experience so what's going to something happening and kind of peak it's sort of innovated around traversal being really around a climbing mechanic but the other ones were you know you're kind of running and sneaking and so we were like well what could be different ways you could traverse a terrain that would have

sort of a fun aspect to it and that kind of was like and a bunch of them was kind of like swimming maybe not so much and 3D like moving in a 3D space like flying like h maybe not and so then we landed on like well what if it was cars and vehicles and I I do love that you've landed on um Death Stranding with cars. I think some people might have in mind an image of what if you were doing Death Stranding but got into a car and to those people I say no. You're close. You're close but not quite. We have these anthropomorphized cars with giant googly eyes and hood flaps that move when you when you proximity chat um and and all of that. Was that uh was the decision to make your characters into like this weird cartoony archetype? Um what set the tone for the

game versus or was that a thing that followed from a conscious decision to make it this kind of zany thing? Because you mentioned Lethal Company, which is funny but still has some horror elements into it. I'm thinking of like Repo, which definitely has its fair share of horror elements, but has like a kind of comic protagonist um character robot thing. Um so which which direction did that go or was it sort of simultaneous genesis on that? you know, from from my perspective, and maybe Eric has a different perspective on this, but I know from from where I was sitting, um, at a as a company, we've always kind of uh leaned into not taking things too seriously. You know, sort of, [clears throat] uh, some of our earlier games, a particular one Eric mentioned earlier, Bushwhacker and Bushwhacker 2, really sort of lean into into making pop culture references and silly jokes and and that sort of thing. And so, um, I think that it was sort of a natural a more natural take for us to aim for that sort of silly sort of non-serious kind

of, uh, um, approach from the from the start. And so, I know when the kind of the idea of Death Stranding with cars have been written down, we kind of looked at and thought that that's actually a little too serious for where we would take it, but it did look as like a good launching off point. Um,
yeah, and I think, yeah, no, I agree. I think one of the things, especially if you know us through Idol Champions, where, you know, it's a licensed Dungeons and Dragons game. We have a license with Wizards of Coast. You know, that goes all the way up through to Hasbro. And so there's, you know, it's great to get to play in that world, especially as we were chatting earlier, I've, you know, DM'd for like 40 plus years. So, it's it's great to be in that world, but it's kind of there's there's some tonal stuff that you do to kind of be part of that brand and part of that universe. Um but with our own things like Crusaders that we had done before that or Bushwhacker as Dave mentioned uh one and two like we kind of often have done really really silly games and so the that was one of the things that when we first talking about well what if we did something in this friendl space it was like well they're pretty silly like oh we that's very in our DNA of the

company and then when we started talking about the like well death stranding with cars like what really resonated with that I think for us when we were all talking about it was It was not the tonality of Death Stranding, but kind of like, oh, like this kind of delivery thing and you're kind of going across this kind of post-apocalyptic kind of space and that could be kind of cool. And I think we we pretty much moved instantly from that to you are the car. Yeah. Like at at no point, I don't recall a single person in that meeting going, "Oh, you know what we should do? We should be a character that gets in a car." We were like, "No, no, no. You want to be the car. Like, we want you to be the car." There was a brief discussion around like having because we were thinking fourplayer multiplayer. Well, one of the thoughts we had was doing that whole everyone has a role and so you're in the car and someone's driving and someone's manning the train
Halo Warthogs and stuff.
Yeah. Or even I think it came up was like you know the Star Wars ride right with the Yeah. the Disney
and then of course that led into the discussion well everyone wants to be

this role or everyone or if you don't have someone doing that then it doesn't work and we know we want to play with from one to four players. We don't want to have it be you have to have four players. So I think that idea pretty quickly
that's one of the hardest things about role based games is if if you want them all to be interesting it's hard to then lose a role where it's like hey today we only have two but tomorrow we have four players
like that's a whole extra kind of balance and fun thing that um makes it tricky. It also um ends up being this case where if you make it sufficiently complex that someone feels ownership of their role making I if if they want to switch, you end up in that like really awkward space where someone else is like a little frustrated because they know they could do that role better. Uh and that tends to not be in in line with sort of the nonsensical fun that friendlop suggests. Uh, and yes, we should ask about that. What is your

definition of friends? What definition are we working with here? Because I I have one and I'm sure plenty of the people at home have one and they may all be different. So, when you say
cut it short just on the name a couple months ago.
Yeah.
Oh, really? Oh, okay. I have to check that out. I'll see if I agree with it or not, Jeff. [laughter]
It's a take.
I mean, so yeah, when we start talking about this, when the ideas start, you know, you kind of come up with some ideas. I think we explore this, you explore this. You kind of do some exploration of it and then you start talking about it more broadly in terms of the studio and for context. So we have like 35 people give or take in the studio. Um and so kind of like okay so I started using the term and I realized oh people are like well what about this game and what about this game? What about this game? And that the the huge caveat being it's a relatively new term. Um, and so we just needed our definition for that term. And it didn't really, you know, I was less worried if other people agreed so much as just making sure that we were all on the same page. And so we kind of divide

friends really into sort of three categories. There's proto friends,
which is anything that takes place before Lethal Company. So Lethal Company being like the kind of like if you will modern friend slop because there's a bunch of stuff that sort of happens. Obviously among us we were chatting about beforehand is obviously very common is one something that people talk about. There's a bunch of others. So we kind of define those all as proto friendlop. And then there are games that are similar to friend slop but break one of the kind of core aspects for us. And so some of the core aspects um they're PV uh PVE and not PVP games. And so there's some that are PV uh P games. And so we're like, well, those are friends slop adjacent um would be one that we would kind of call it. There's other games that don't have a lot of game systems within them. So like web fishing, which is, you know, a shared fishing kind of hangout game is a very light kind of um game systems like

you're just fishing. There's not a lot to it. We call that an adjacent friendlop adjacent as compared to actual friends lop. Um, so you know, straight up Friends Lop would be obviously Lethal Company, Content Warning, Peak, Repo, most recently RV, there yet head the headliners, you know, a bunch of games within that space that are kind of core Friends games. But but it's just it we needed a way to be able to talk about it and know that we were all meaning the same thing when we were talking about it.
It's a really tricky thing. And I was telling Eric before stream that like my first memory of not a friendlop game, but something that gave me some of the vibe used to be multiplayer Halo with the sticky bombs.
Yep.
And the fact that it was set up early on by when you were playing single or double player like campaign mode, you throw it and you hit the little guys and they'd like run back toward their teammates yelling, "Get it off me. Get it off me." Right before they exploded and took out their buddies. Like that was almost built in conceptually [clears throat] from an idea. But like

that happened all the time in multiplayer.
Yeah.
And I will say some of it was more intentional than others. But like accidentally sabotaging your friends has a long and glorious history in multiplayer gaming.
And it's been interesting to see that get so focused more recently on what's been called friend slop of the
both cooperative and simultaneous cooperative and adversarial nature of a game with adversarial meaning mostly for fun.
Yeah. like you're not purposely being a dick. You're like, "Wouldn't it be funny if
Yeah. Well, and I think I think even more broadly, couch co-op games are definitely sort of, you know, the the grandparents of friendlop games, the sort of modern friends games. within that, I would say a game that comes out in 2026 that is, you know, you have to do couch co-op with, I'd say is not a friend slop game because, you know, they're very much designed, you know, you often on, you know, Discord server with your friends and you're like, let's what what game do we want to

play tonight? And you kind of all jump into a friend game all from your, you know, PCs at home.
Yeah. Uh so you mentioned uh like the amount of I guess I would refer to it as like crunchiness, right? Like the crunch of different game systems. How did you decide on like where in that continuum from uh sort of uh there like I would I would almost say like lethal company is like at one end of you have an item but really you don't have that many mechanics other than like bring a thing back and shove it in the thing to make um uh to make your payment versus something that's got a lot more like say repo which is you know you have to manage the amount that you're putting in multiple different turnins in the same level and some of those items can be weapons and some of those items can't be and how all of that works. How did you get a sense of where you wanted to be in that space, right? Because um we were talking earlier about Idol Champions

being a game that's very sort of rewarding of a cerebral uh effort of like making a build uh versus something where you're just kind of like it's a vibe. Well, just go with it, yolo. Right. Like how did you decide where to end up in that spectrum? Yeah, I think yeah. So at a high level and then maybe Dave you can fill in details but at a high level I think
you know we knew we weren't doing something like Idol Champions which is like all cerebral like so much of it is thinking we knew a lot of the fun of what we were thinking about came from like just the kind of physics and the interactions and all those kind of pieces and then we also knew that games like like I think you know web fishing is a good example of a game which didn't doesn't really have hardly any game systems so we're like okay so we know that's too few game systems and we know Idol Champions is like way too many systems from what we're kind of thinking about especially a game that you just easily drop in with your friends. You don't need tutorials or anything like that. So we kind of knew that we

operated that and from my observation of you and Justin talking about it. It was like well let's try this. Is that fun? Oh no that's not fun or that is fun. [laughter]
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think certainly, and it's sort of a a bit of a it's a similar statement that that Jeff said just a moment ago, which was the idea of like um uh wouldn't it be fun if uh as as sort of a driving principle for putting things in when we're thinking about them and then trying them out and then, you know, doing an internal play test with that and people play it and either they look at it and think, "Oh, that was fun." or they do something completely different with it and then watching what they do with it then drives a direction of oh well we can like lean into that and have it have it work the way that they were using it rather than what we thought it was. Um and then just letting things that didn't have traction just you know fall by the wayside. I
I can't tell chat I can't I can't tell how many of them are puns and how many of them are just like parts of speech, right? Because we've had like driving and traction and I can't tell I can't tell. These are like people who know Jeff. Jeff is the worst about puns and

like it's just the delivery is so clean I can't even tell. Okay. Anyway, I had to get that off my chest. I couldn't I couldn't tell. Dave, I would say an interesting thing about game development that it is simultaneously a yes and no but kind of environment as well as a hard execute environment because everyone like and that's part of what being the design and especially the lead kind of design around it is is figure getting that sense of when to lean into it say oh this but what if we amped it up to 11 or oh no that is absolutely not the way we want this kind of thing going let us pull it before people spend more brain cycles on and it becomes kind of integral to the game and the hard cuts as well as the oh well now
yeah I think I think so coming I mean I guess I've been doing this for not quite 15 years now but one of the biggest having played a lot of games and then coming into the games industry one of the biggest things was

really understanding how hard it is to make games and and this sort of speaks to the number of prototypes that we've internally killed before people are getting to see one. They're like, "Oh, it's a new thing." It's like, "Wow, we've actually killed lots of stuff." And it's it's hard. And obviously, you know, you know this very well, Jeff, that you're you're trying to create emotion for people and you're doing it at scale across this game will be in 15 different languages and a bunch of different cultures and people all over the world. and to to you know put together a set of pixels and systems that people interact with that then produce a set of emotions in them at scale across cultures and languages is really really tough right are you
yeah absolutely
oh I'm I'm I'm I I have on my on my center screen I have the game up and like when you say that I'm looking just at the one static screen that I have and

how many of these things are challenges to localize, right? And and and to regionalize into a thing that conveys humor in another language, right? And I'm just thinking about the languages that I know something about. And there are more languages that I know nothing about than languages I know something about. Um and that is that does feel like it's the it's one of the biggest asks particularly with with games like this. Um yeah. What was
you about ready to hop in?
Yeah. Yeah. Uh I was I was gonna Yes. Let's unless you got another question or two, but
Well, I want to play the game.
I guess my last question was on that list of things. What's been the most enjoyable challenge as we as we get into the game with building this game and getting it to this point?
Oh, wow. That's a that's a that's a hard question.
At least or you could say a a one that you've enjoyed a lot. Sometimes the most is a hard question to answer, but
one that you've enjoyed a lot. I mean, I I think um and it's come together like

really um over a short period of time. Um and so from a just actually being able to get in and play with people and see people like playing together and when they start picking each other up, it's that um watching that has been very enjoyable. Um I think from a technical aspect the one of the biggest questions we went into this was could we make a procedurally generated world that was going to be fun to play in and the answer to that uh which is still I I think is very much leaning towards yes was something that we didn't have a lot of vision on until I don't know two and a half weeks ago like it was ago yeah it has come very quickly in terms of of getting going from building technical systems that we needed to actually getting them all working together to make a a a level. And up until then, we've been testing with a hand created level. So, this the level that we'll be playing today uh is going to be the first we've seen or shown externally of um
the procedurally generated world.

Yeah, that's certainly been the biggest I think for me, you know, Dave, I'm not involved in the development in that way. Uh, but as a player, I I really love games where I get to explore an environment. And we've been playing on the same map that Dave sort of handcrafted and has just kind of been modifying for for this point a few months.
Yeah.
And it was only I want to say the second Friday or Yeah. second Friday in January, whatever that was, where we actually got to try a procedurally generated level. And we've talked a lot about like, well, can we get this to work? And if it doesn't work, what do we end up doing? and what's kind of our fallback and all that kind of stuff. And it's been it's just been really gratifying to see it come together. It's still, you know, you may see some quirky stuff.
Oh, 100%. Yeah.
Guaranteed you'll see some quirky stuff, but yeah, getting getting that procedural stuff to work has been Yeah.
Yeah. It's definitely I I would say from when we started it from just building those pieces together and having what looked like sort of a pseudo terrain to I I I I put those pieces together and I

I'd given them to one of our other developers here who's been working down a set of of of components we wanted to put in and just watching from day to day to day as the as the outcome come the output started to look cooler and cooler and cooler. Um that's been really satisfying. So
awesome. Awesome.
Okay, last question as we're going in then. Um, what should we have our viewers be watching for as we play? Like is there any particular feedback that getting, you know, an extra set of eyes on it or is it just watch and tell us what you think?
I think it's that one. I watch
and I think it's two things. I think it's, you know, you can watch and tell us what you think and then uh as of tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. Pacific time, if you're like, I would like to also check it out as well as provide feedback directly.
Can we throw some links up for that? you can like just go get the play test both from Epic and from Steam or either one. It's got crossplay so you can play across both of those if you want. Um and then you can just play it yourself and see what do you think. Um one note about

it um is that uh the procedural generation we're just doing. So there's kind of like day runs and night runs. So, for that one, there's one day, one night, and it is a procedurally generated map, but because there's still some problems with that system, creating areas that you can get trapped in and stuff like this. Um, so for the play test, it'll be the same procedurally generated map for everyone. And if you restart it and play it again after you're doing a day and night cycle, it'll still be the same one. So, it's procedurally [clears throat] generated, but we're not doing a different one every time you look.
Yeah, we're going to we're going to pick a pick a generation. Pick a seat that we like. pick one that that's got a that looks good and has a a good breadth of uh of things to look at are
as someone who's played an awful lot of rogish games with procedurally generated uh uh maps. Uh yeah, that makes sense. I think a lot of a lot of chat's familiar with all of the reasons that that is the best way to get feedback because sometimes everything generates in one corner or everything generates and the

seams don't and Yep. I mean I we had a fun I think when we we did a play test internally uh last week and one of the groups uh their seed generated uh the last destination base in with a giant ocean in front of it like the cut down and the water came in and they couldn't get there although they seem to have a heck of a good time just trying to make the jump to get over but it was just completely cut off by water. Uh, so
yes, I think for context, I just was looking at a calendar here. It was two weeks ago today was the first time that we actually played it anyone. And then the next day, the Friday the 16th was the first time that we tried the proced that we did a companywide play test with the procedure generation. So it is
looking good, but yeah.
Okay.
All right.
And so one quick disclaimer as we move into the game. This is all not done. That's probably obvious from the nature of the conversation, but I did just want to hammer that home. None of this is

done and there is every chance that they may decide that your car must be hot pink in the play test and that might just happen. So, like don't don't worry too much about it. All right, let's get into the game. Um, I'm going to I'm going to turn a little bit of the game noise on so we can
actually in chat I've got a big question.
Yes.
Okay. Ready? Let's see. Is it um
Oh, well yes. Uhhuh. Or
Okay, we got black Padre or gray Padre, brown Padre's hat or what I believe is my most trucker looking one.
Oh, yeah. You need that one. You You need the trucker hat
while I'm busy getting flipped over in revenge for Yeah. All right, great. Well, this is this is how this is going to go. Um, so, [laughter] so this is this is sort of your lobby uh area where um people can uh start the game and and get everything together and Okay, I'm going to over um great. And now I'm being carried around. Amazing. Uh we're

we're going on a ride together, chat. So, uh this is without a hitch. Um these these cars are obviously all of our players. Uh one thing to note is that so that we can keep having our conversation, um we're not using the built-in proximity chat. Uh if we were using the proximity chat, the hoods would flap along and that's pretty great. Uh I have questions. Uh Jeff, could you could you pick up Eric real quick?
Um
okay. And now now hold on a sec. I have a very very important question.
Can someone move me close to Jeff?
Oh, let's see.
Oh, I see where you're going.
Whoa.
Uh okay. This would of course require me being okay there. All
right. So, if I do this.
No, it won't. It won't [laughter] let me while I'm say what does happen if we do that.
Listen, listen. You You got Oh, boy. All right. Okay. Hold on.
I'm trying to grab Jeff.
Oh, almost.

So close. I'm holding exactly still.
Yeah, I'm being moved around.
Hold on. Let me move us a little further away from that thing. All right. So, I love how you get you get a bunch of people in a room and the first thing we do is try and break it. Okay. It won't lock on to Jeff. So, you've got you've got protection there. That
I think cuz I'm already locked on.
No. Well, cuz uh everybody was picked up as um they're picking me up, right? So,
and like if it's not contiguous, I can pick you up, RIGHT? OKAY. ANYWAY,
oh the humanity or the Oh, the car manity. Although I don't know how much we resemble a manity. All right, so here we are in our in our Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Uh Chad is correctly pointing out that we are already trying to Garry's mod this. Uh did you Wait, hold sec. Did you expect anything different for a moment? If so, I'm sorry cuz that's immediately where we're going with this. So
if it's really a game where you lean into that, right? So
yeah. Right. Well, like the chaos is

kind of the point. I I also enjoy that. Uh kill all humans is in 666 like that. That's great. That's one of the things that um probably won't is a bit of a a pain to localize. Um the other one that I like is the uh no exit paint spray paint it over with JK to indicate where the exit is. [laughter] Phenomenal. No notes. Amazing. Um,
now Will and Jeff, if you hit escape and then click vehicle,
okay,
you can do all sorts of things to your vehicle if [music] you wish to look a little different, including choosing a different vehicle.
Oh, [laughter] that's amazing. Okay, we can have eyeliner. Okay, I like I like the lashes. That's good.
I think though you can't change the color yet, right? [laughter] No, you can't. It is. That's coming soon.
Yes. But you can't change the color yet.
One of the very requested features.
Yes. Yes.
I like I like the the Oh, I love that

you could put the apocalypse spears of witness me. Just [laughter] Just scream witness as you as you run around. Uh fantastic. Amazing. Uh and we have spaces for uh Oh, that's cool. I love the uh the extra um the extra life cat thing.
Okay. Yeah. So, and one of the things, one of the things that's in there is there's a cannon as a in the hat slot. Um, and that one if you equip it um, and you use your horn, then it blows confetti. And that will be a reward for people who do the play test and give us feedback. They also have to give us their email and then we'll send them a code and they can add that in
in the final release.
In the final release. Thank you. Yes. Yes. Yes. Not so,
did you hear the horn noises?
I I I I did. I did. Um,
this is giving me Lost Boy vibes as well as a couple of other
goons. Okay. Yeah. Um, great question uh from chat. If you're being picked up,

can you escape?
Yes. Uh, yeah. That was one of the things that when we first were play testing, people are like, "Hey [laughter] guys, if you hit boost, do the boost, which is shift on keyboard and mouse, that'll get you out."
Okay.
It's our consent mechanism. I just skyboxed myself and I don't know how. So that's fun.
Whoa.
Man, my jump just sky.
Yeah, if something is something happened where it might have been a physics thing, but some combination of things that I did. And I'm so glad that this is all being recorded for posterity. I pressed space once and I immediately skyboxed myself. Fortunately, your skybox recovery is excellent. So that's wonderful. Were was I on the fireworks?
No,
I had just blown the horn.
Wait, hold on.
I repeated it shortly, but enough. I can't repeat though.
Yeah, it's not It's not horn and jump.

Is Is it jump and then horn? It's not jump and then horn. It's not horn and then jump. And it's not both at the same time. And it may or may not have the Yeah. Jump turned into I must go. My people need me. Yeah. Okay. So, while we could play around in this beautiful physics wasteland sandbox thing, um,
we haven't actually started really getting into the game part of the game.
Yeah. So, uh, what what is important here? What what what ought we pay attention to here? Or should is the answer nothing and we should merely grab this mysterious package which is labeled um, what exactly is this package labeled? Uh, a pacazon.
Yeah. And and just head out into the wasteland.
Yeah. No, I mean,
let's do that. Yeah. Yeah.
Great.
Because we don't like if you look at the team big piggy bank, we only have 250 bucks. So, we don't have like much to buy upgrades. There are upgrades, but we can't really afford them. I don't
I mean, we could uh we could look at this little screen here, you know,
uh make a guess. It might what it might be telling us.
Okay. I I do like the very old timey

sort of thing. Okay. The box has eyes. That's great. That's awesome. I'm to pick up the box. Okay. I got that bit. Check. Uh, and then we go out into the wilderness and then I get thrown off a cliff by all of you and the box dies, too. Right.
Wait, where did you see this?
It's It's on the It's on the screen. I'm large.
He got it right. I think that was right.
Yeah. No, that's that's about right. There you go.
Yeah. Okay. Right. I also love the ready check. I absolutely adore the very uh fluorescent styled ready check. I love that a lot. That's okay.
Okay.
Procedurally generated. So, none of us have actually seen this.
Oh, yeah. That's true. We haven't seen it. So, yeah, Dave and I don't know what's in here any better than you guys do.
So, what what exactly is meant by fill the package?
Like, do I just put like this cactus in it? Like, how how do I
Let me see. Let me see if I can lift some. Can I lift

put this rock in it?
Okay. I I can't lift cactus, so I don't think it's that.
Okay, great. Excellent. Um, well, I love how there's a nice convenient road and I was immediately like, that's not the point. We're going
Come back here. I've got a rock for you. Let's see if I can put this rock in it.
I tried I I tried to put it on the rock.
Okay, that doesn't seem to be it. Okay,
I was curious if like you were carrying the package. Let me see if I can put something in your in the package. In other words, do you actually No, it wouldn't be that cuz you need to be able to play solo. Well, and the uh and the thing showed us the um the thing, but there is like Yeah, there's a car over here. So, can I
You just brought them the car.
I just brought the car over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Hold. This is a journey of discovery for them. I don't know. You need to bring them a car.
Okay, cool. So, we press E to interact with a thing
and that puts the car in. Okay.
All right.
And now our package value has gone up

2,000 bucks. Oh yeah.
Okay. So, we need to get $15,000 in order to do Oh, and there's a thing over here. There's like a little
How did you end up doing that?
Oh, dear. That that [laughter]
Oh, it's angry. It's got It's got angry faces. Run.
Oh, no. [laughter] Okay, so the package is now less valuable because the angry bug bot blew up on it. Okay,
dude. The belly flop animation of that was
so good.
Yeah. Uh, someone suggested that I should uh mail this to Anakin Skywalker uh after making it full of sand. Uh, this seems wise.
Oh, here. Well, there's value there's money value up here by me.
Uh, okay. Well, I'm I'm working on a car right now, so one moment, please. [groaning] I I love the proximity nature of the um
Let's see.
Okay, so I
Oh, cool. Okay,
so you just put it near it. Okay, great. So, like one person's job is to grab the box and to and to keep it. Um,
why can't I pick these up?

You should be able to, Jeff.
And you can pick up multiple
mine. [snorts]
Oh, but the the I see there's additional value in being a pickup truck
versus like a car cuz you can put stuff in the bed a little more easily. [laughter]
No comment. No comment.
Okay. All right. Okay. Um, am I restricted on what I can interact with while I'm holding the package?
I don't think so.
Uh, you can't. You have to put it down to pick something else up.
Oh, yeah. To pick up like a car or something. Yeah.
Let's see if I see other stuff around over here.
Is the box growing? It does appear to be to to be that way.
Oh, I just saw there's some Are these landmines?
I don't know, Jeeoff. You should drive over them and find out.
It's chasing me and beeping.
Oh, yeah. That's uh Yeah, that's It looks like uh our elf ready. [laughter]
I was trying to pick it up.

Got to get good.
Okay. So, can I So, these little these little repair icons.
Oh, I see. I can drive over them and repair. Okay. So, the cars are the the broken down cars are like chests. stopped it.
I don't think you're ready for the pickup.
Okay. I can't lift it terribly high now, which does seem to be a bit of a problem.
Uh yeah, using the scroll wheel will lift it as high as
I think he's got it. I think it's as high as it goes.
That is that is max height. So
yeah, that's something we have been fiddling with.
Yeah, later in the game you can get upgrades that increase the range of your crane quite quite a bit. Um, but it might make sense to have the default on that a little bit higher, especially for the package.
It will. Um, let's see. I just found some stuff right over here. Let's see.
I have just kind of decided that I am now the package and I have clipped the

package over my car bottle. Um,
oh, that package. Oh, it's getting suspiciously larger. That's
Yeah, it's getting much larger. And I can't imagine how I'm going to be able to cope with this when it's 15k worth if that is three times bigger than this. Um, so we will we will have to see. All right. Okay. Okay. Cool. Uh, Chad is asking about sentient car cameos um from from various IPs. [laughter]
Only legally distinct ones.
Yeah, obviously very extremely legally completely distinct from any uh rights holders that might be watching. But it would be kind of cool if there was like a white and uh a white um VW bug perhaps with some strong primary color striping. Uh that might be amusing. Or perhaps a washed up retired race car um and his tow truck friend in the middle of I don't know a town in the desert.
I keep wanting to say get her done. [laughter]
Yeah.

[snorts] Okay. Well, Will, one of the things we did was the we put together this van version thinking players might uh be inspired with certain certain IPs.
Okay. Okay. Interesting.
Did they have Scooby snacks in them?
Yeah, I didn't say that.
Legally, he did not say that.
Why am I driving so slow suddenly?
I will say that it is it uh it is quite interesting to
Oh, no. Now I have to file an accident report and wait for the wait for people to show up and now I need witnesses and I have to call my insurance. Jeff, you've completely derailed the stream.
If you come over here, I'm curious if you drive over, do you have to pick them up or can you just drive over this?
I drive near them and they go into the box. Um I I was going to say the the controlling the box is quite an interesting experience. We'll definitely let let Jeff do it next time. Um but

Oh, that sounds like work. That's all for you. Thanks.
Okay, great. Awesome. It is just very interesting how um you've managed to make it both um fiddly enough to be rewarding, but intuitive enough that it's not frustrating, right? Cuz like if a thing in a game like this is too easy, like if the physics is too forgiving that it almost feels like it's
Oops.
It's not fun or interesting. I got to stop backing up.
Will, I got a I found a trove for you.
Okay. Well, I have
We got over here. Let's see. Up to the right of where you are.
Okay. Up to the right. And by that
follow me.
Okay, cool. Great. I'm following you.
That's not following me. [laughter]
Okay, great. I'm following you. Um. Oh, yes. Okay, great. I am now Oh, excellent. I am now stuck. I have been I have been run ground. The the rock is directly in the middle of my tires.

Phenomenal. Also, Jeff, watch out. Yeah, you should be able to jump out of that, Will. It might
I just I didn't want to jump with the package because I've we've already hemorrhaged like $5,000 in package value. And I am
I am the knocking stuff off of your buddies by just regular driving is great.
Yeah.
Oh, there's some more up here, Will, in the cacti.
Uh, okay. I see. Oh, I love I love the the um the HUD that gives you your friend's locations based on the wheel color. I like that a lot. It's very useful because over here is got to be like the least helpful thing espec Well, it's a little more helpful with proximity chat obviously, right? That you get um you know over here means something. Hey, I have a just another quick question. Um why cactus got eyes though?
Why wouldn't cactus have eyes? Well, none of the other cactus have eyes. Just that one.
Are you cact cactiest or

No, I I am I seek to know more because I've been running over other cacti in my quest for stuff and I want to know if I should feel bad about running over other cacti.
Other sentient cacti.
Yeah, right. Exactly. Um, Spin Dash is quickly realizing exactly how funny it is to put googly eyes on inanimate objects in video games. in video games. Friendos, I before I got my DSLR, which is my current camera, I had a um like a Logitech one, and if you're familiar with those, they have like a bigger frontage than like just the camera lens. And I straight up stuck googly eyes on it so I could make eye contact with something while I was talking to the camera. Um
I will Is that a spaceship?
That's a train.
I was about to tell a story, but I want to see spaceship. I'll tell story later. I have not found this previously in our playthroughs.
Oh, no. Oh, come on. Go up. Go up.

Oh, yeah. That's definitely a spaceship. It looked like a train from my angle. Nope. That's spaceship. Out of un video games is just a well-known universal. That's true.
Okay.
Are you going up to the top?
I was going to see if I could. Yeah.
Yeah. You There's a
There's a boost pad up there. Yeah.
How interesting.
Spoilers. I've never made it up here. Ah,
that's some jump scene.
Yeah, just look at the mascot for breakfast. Toasty McTasts.
For those who are not familiar with our our other weekly talk show, Extra Breakfast, Matt's Toaster Googly Eyes, and was named Toasty McTast Face by chat. Oh, hey, look. There's another cactus with eyes.
Hey, cool. chasing after another car to stick um stuff in is a nice little set of its own rewards.
Yeah.
Well, I'm trying to not like floor it in random directions.

And I do like as well that we always know kind of where we're going,
right? We always have like a home marker on the on the thing. That's nice. Uh
we do.
Yeah. It's on the It's on the compass up top.
Oh, I say hold on. Sorry. trying not to fall off a spaceship.
Uh, and part of that's in my brain cuz we've been playing Hightail recently and I just I I tried to tell everyone that the direction was east when it in fact was south. So, not only was I wrong, but it was the wrong axis like entirely. So, I'm egg on my face. I've been paying extra attention to compasses in games recently just to make sure you're not on some kind of ring world, right? Uh to the best of my knowledge, we are not in uh what what one might call an angel world or perhaps a halo. Oh no, I got landed. Okay, package is largely.
How are you carrying that many things, Eric?
Uh pro. Got to get good, Jeff.
I do. I obviously am not good enough.

Uh yeah. So there's like bigger things. They can go on the bottom that you carry at the bottom of your
Oh, interesting. And then the small things you can kind of carry multiple of them. You just click on them when you're picking stuff up and they just sort of stack on top of each other.
Um I uh curiosity
killed the cat.
Yeah, I mean probably um was there any thought to putting any of like these physics objects to mess with besides the box or were they in the were they in the starting hub and I just failed to notice? because I was distracted with, you know, getting thrown around and and everything else.
So, actually, in the current starting hub, there there aren't any. Um, this is actually a a brand new one from what we had in the previous build. And the previous one, we actually did scatter a bunch of them around uh because we were hoping to sort of tutorial that. And so,

uh it's a good um a good note there that they are missing um and we need to put those back. Um,
yeah,
just to like practice picking up and and and doing stuff.
Lucky the play test hasn't gone live yet.
Yeah. Yes. [laughter] Yeah.
Uh, okay. So, now we have reached I believe our target package value was 15,000. So, we have reached our target.
We're allowed to exceed it. Interesting. Okay.
Yeah. Um, but I imagine uh that if we exceed it, we will get to either keep the extra money or good things will happen.
Um, so and I can still move while carrying the package. So, that seems fine. We can just keep
Yeah.
Although, we should probably figure out where we're going
here. It will. I got stuff for you. Let's see.
There you go.
So, I've got a little green bar over the little orange bar. So, the orange bar is the core stuff and the green bar is the extra stuff like
Yep.
Great. Uh, all right. So, the house icon is that way to the north uh northeast.

Yeah. So, let's let's head and uh we'll we'll see where it is. Or yonder. Yonder feels like the right kind of like desert movement word for where we're going is yonder, right? Um is it meant to be disturbing in lore to find car wrecks? Yeah. Of of sentient of other sentient cars and just rip parts off of them to put in a box for a corporation that you're delivering to people? That's a great question. Next question. Don't think too hard about it. Um, that's
that's the same answer you gave to me when we were playing Pokemon and I was asking if um everything in the world was a Pokemon, where what are we eating?
That's another great question, Jeff. Next question. [laughter]
Listen, sometimes uh you learn to know better. So, is this this looks this feels like the way we started perhaps?
Oh, we got to head this way, Eric. There.
I don't remember having gone across that bridge.

Fine. You can't you can't finish it without me.
That's true. We can.
Take that.
Oh, hello. Beep beep.
I want to grab this
yonder.
Okay, great. We got
another car.
I do like the little confetti that pops out of the the dead cars. [laughter]
Yes.
And even better, out of your cannon. The confetti.
That's true.
It may or may not be the same confetti. Oh, [snorts]
so is um I I I get we we I cannot help but notice
what is that?
You can pick up the boost pads.
Oh, that's horrifying. I can't wait to see people destroy each other with that. Um, [laughter]
uh, so we we've only seen like sort of what I would call like passive enemies, right? They're enemies that like if you run into them, then they like sort of uh

blow themselves up on you. Uh, and I assume
there will be a beacon up here.
All right.
Oh, that that's oriented backwards. [laughter]
Um,
oh, another one. Oh, yeah. And and now, by the way, we have reached maximum package value. Can't
I just picked some stuff up and it can't get any bigger. So, this is it. It's 20k or bust.
Um is I assume at night we will have like I don't know car vampires, car werewolves chasing us in some way uh to to to to attempt to prevent us from achieving our objective.
Oh, I see. We have to have everyone here. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. What's live in the this version?
Uh, so this version doesn't have the monster,
right?
The monster. Great. Love that.
Yes. Yes. There is a
a teaser for the monster in the next area, but the monster itself is not active.
Is it a teaser in this build?
It is in this build. Yeah.

Okay. So, I need
the gate now
on on the pack.
And the sucketron.
Oh, there we go.
Okay, great. [laughter]
And the succ. Okay, great. I love the succin dash chat wants to know um if it's a car navor. [laughter] [snorts]
Now H is headlights.
H is head. Okay.
All right. So we do have a little bit of money and that means we can buy some of the upgrades.
The completely balanced upgrade.
Uh they have had a balanced pass. Okay. They are in much better shape. Very interesting that we get all of the value. So, we got all 20,000 of our
Are we sharing the money or is it per person?
We have to share.
Okay.
All right. So,
or you know, whatever.
You [laughter] can, you know, whatever. Well,
I'm going to rescue a cat. Be right back.
Um, okay. So, we've got an engine

upgrade. We've got a durability upgrade. We've got a slick tires upgrade. Can you blind your friends with your headlights? It doesn't look like it.
Um,
yoink.
Upgrades in the base, Dave. Are the upgrades
like every one of these stations has all the upgrades that are available or do you go around each of them?
So, each station there are 12 upgrade uh terminals and they've all been assigned a random upgrade from a set that's been decided for this level. Um, and there's a couple of repeating ones because there's uh more stations than there are total upgrades that are available at this level.
Fascinating. And I assume that um there is eventually the goal might be to have a different uh like sort of way station archetypes perhaps that these are all cuz like I will confess that I got a little confused because when we approached it looked like we were driving back into the place we left from. Um, you say

model cuz you know early. Um,
oh, I see some money has been spent while I rescued the cat.
Yes, I upgraded my crane. I don't I can't speak to what the others did, but I upgraded my crane.
Hey, I also upgraded my crane.
I upgraded my jump.
Oh, yes.
It's just I didn't even need to see it and I just heard the double jump and I was like, "Oh, no."
Yeah. I will you can see in the bottom left of the UI there's like a little icon that you can hover over which
it's currently behind me uh for our viewers but it says I have a crane upgrade with crane range strength and height.
So that is lovely.
Who's hurt? Oh Dave,
am I burning? I am burning
a little bit. Yeah.
Okay.
Package Oh, there's a package capacity. Oh, insufficient funds. Package capacity seems like the kind of thing you want to buy as early as possible.
Yeah, that's true.

Okay. Yes.
Okay, there we have
I'm going to forego an upgrade to let us buy the package upgrade next time.
Okay, that seems good. All right. So, now we we go out into the perfectly normal, very reasonable desert at night where there are definitely probably not terribly many monsters that want to eat us.
Once more into the breach, dear friends.
It's a little It's a little worrisome to me. Just as a note, just as like a a fun little thought that the required package value is half of what it was during the day. It just seems for no particular reason like it might be for, you know, some kind of purpose and I'm just a little bit scared. Just a little teensy bit. Just a note. Just a thought.
Deserts are notoriously safe at night. Yeah, totally. That's why I'm going towards this thing that's definitely not a ghost.
Oh, perfect. We got a

Oh, nice.
Oh, I'll hold it on. You'll have to uh
Yeah. Okay. Go back. Someone has to sit on the button.
Okay. To to activate rainbow road.
There's a mine coming. Mine coming. Mine. Dave. Dave. Dave.
Wait. Where we going? What's going on here?
I'm just watching the mine ball.
Yeah. But the road's not working. Uhoh.
What?
This isn't good.
What happened?
He seems to be able to drive right through the road. The uh
I had that happen.
I will. Right over here.
Hold on. We're Yes. I will I won't be right there, but I
I'm right next. I just dropped some loot on the ground for you. Oh, you're in it. I think it I think it's broken.
Wow.
Well, that's going to just take the fun out of this one. You're supposed to be able to drive on that. And I've never seen it broken.
I've seen it once.
You've seen it. Okay.
Mark the time and the date. We officially got our Well, that's never happened before. Uh, which happens, I think, every time we show a game on stream. We get at least one. Well, that's never happened before.
That's like every demo in the history of the game industry.

Correct.
Yeah. Uh, but I'm very I'm very glad we discovered that.
Um, I'm
regretting not getting the crane upgrade now. [laughter]
Does it It upgrades the width, right? How far out you can
Yeah. And how high you can
and actually how much pulling strength it has for some of the pull puzzles.
Oh, really? Yeah.
Where did Will go?
Oh, don't mind me. I'm just running myself into a rock. It's fine.
I can see I see mine over here, so watch out if you're near me. Oh, there he is. Yeah, I see the package.
Does the package appear on your radar?
Yes or no? Yes. Wait, it should.
It should.
Yes, it does.
It does appear on our radar. Yes,
there's another mine.
But we also have like the package also has a beacon and the further you get away from it, you can see it shoot up into the sky.
Yeah,
yeah,
Dave, at some point are we going to be able to build mines and explosives?

build the mines. I mean, you can pick up
pick up the small ones.
I was just wondering if we're going to get any mine crafting.
I knew it. Like, I saw where we were going and much like myself getting hit by some of these mines, I was powerless to do anything to stop the inexraable impact of that pun.
[laughter]
Okay. Fun fact, that didn't hurt the package at all.
Okay.
Oh, yeah. Great. Thanks. Love the love just holding the mine, [laughter]
man. From far away, I just keep see the package value going down while I'm trying to pick stuff.
Yeah. I don't know why that could possibly be, Jeff. It's definitely [laughter] Excuse me.
I got to say the bias that y'all have introduced towards landing wheels down

is very good cuz it doesn't feel overwhelming and it feels like you might have gotten lucky over and over again. But you I'm definitely not getting this lucky over and over again. So, there's a bias to landing wheels down despite the fact that the flip is a thing.
Yes.
And that's very well executed. I don't think a lot of people would think about it uh if they weren't looking for it. And it's really well done.
Yeah. One of the things that's been really interesting working on it is just all of the little adjustments to the traction of the car and the jump and when you jump, you land on your and how much damage you take and landing on your wheels and there like lots and lots of iterations and it's like let's do this now. Let's do this. Now let's do this. Now let's do that. I mean, and particularly with the wheels one when you we early on you could take on a big ramp jump, which actually now I'm a little sad I didn't get some of those ramps back in for the procedural stuff, but um you take a big jump and it's fun and then you'd flip and you'd land on your hood and uh
Oh, mine.

Ah, Jeff. Kind of ruins the fun of being able to do a jump if you land on your hood.
Yeah, it sort of like it disincentivizes you if you landed and you take a bunch of damage. You're like, why did I do that fun thing then? Yeah,
I'm uh I'm a little on fire, by the way. Just like as a note in case anyone was wondering. Just a little on fire. Not like dangerously on fire, but like kind of on fire.
So, those cars that you open up do have wrenches like that one there. Yeah,
I was looking for one of those. I didn't see one. I saw a bunch of like new scattered debris.
Oh, that's a good one. Dave, years ago, I was playing one of the Tomb Raider games and um they'd made a really really good parkour system in it
and so I was enjoying it, but they also for that one and that one only decided that they were going to hide these little like artifact things you found
behind corners and in crates and little nooks and crannies. So they made an entire game about movement that if you were a collector, you then had to stop like every 50 meters to go search the whole

environment,
right? And
and it was one of the most jarring disconnects of like game design I think I'd ever seen.
So and interestingly, right, I can see another world. I can see the impetus, right, which is we have made this really cool thing. We would like to reward people for fully utilizing this parkour system to navigate and get to weird places.
Right.
Nope.
I wasn't even moving that time. I was just holding still before
you stopped. Oh, I hit you from I hit the package.
Yeah.
All right. Well, we got a path here off to the left. Let's see where this goes.
Let's leave the road in the middle of the night. Said people moments before only good things happened.
Yeah, sounds right. every horror movie ever.
Let's, you know, let's split up.
Yeah, right. [laughter] Come on, gang. Let's split up and
cover more ground.
Oh, I think I got an elevator over here.
Ooh. Oh, I don't think I've seen a car seat before.
I think I've we've got we've grabbed a

couple. They may not have been notable.
Maybe I just haven't seen it.
It is kind of interesting because um the fact that you don't have to directly interact with the
like the bindable over here this way.
Yeah. Um, trying to avoid that
big mine.
Trying to avoid that mine. That's a big one. Um, means that it it does sort of fade into indistinguishable just number, right? Also, I can't see because of where the package is. Oh, now I've clipped into the package. Okay, great. We're good. [laughter] We're good. I've clipped my camera into the package. Everything is probably mostly fine, maybe.
Uh, do we want the person with the package to get the elevator?
Uh, yeah. Go up the elevator. Okay.
Okay. Great. This is going to go well.
Whoa. What [laughter] happened? What happened?
Oh no.
Yes. Oh, the package is dead. Amazing.
Where did the package go?

I have no idea.
Turned it inside out and exploded.
Oh god. Uh, [laughter]
so it was clearly like like really got jammed in there when the elevator started going up. And uh
I didn't Oh, I guess. Can we see it on the radar?
It's on the It's on the thing. It's over here.
Uh, the package is still on the radar.
But I believe it might be out of bounds because it's up this big wall.
Oh, is it up?
We can go up there and take a look.
It's like straight west from here.
Oh, whoa. Did you just like
I just shot uh that elevator is uh
the elevator.
It's not might be a bug.
It's not doing elevator things.
It's doing
I mean get back on it. We'll see what happens.
It's doing [laughter] canon things.
All right. I'll get on the elevator. You can push the button.
If Will got on it cuz then the viewers can all see.
Oh, yeah. That's true. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, something is there's something very wrong with that.
Yeah. A little bit of extra elevator action going on.

Oh, chat. Yeah.
I mean, it worked yesterday.
I love it. Someone says, "I think we found a hitch."
Yeah. Right. [laughter] Well done. Well done, everybody.
Yeah. All right. Well, that went off without a hitch.
It did technically elevate its contents. Well done.
See how he's sliding around?
Yeah. Something totally
I've got hands Yep. I'm dead.
Oh. Oh. Oh, he blew up.
Yeah. So, I had hands off controls that entire time. So, once I got in the elevator and the elevator started moving, none of that movement was from me.
Yeah. There there is something very wrong with that. Hey, but you know what? We found it today. Not tomorrow,
right?
Yeah.
Wait, hold on. I'm
Oh, that's so cool.
You guys are ghost tires.
We're ghost tires. Yeah,
well, now the run is uh feeling a little eepy because it's too tired.
I don't think you can pick up a rib shot at the end of that.
Stored the package. I have magical and minim buttons.
Ah. Oh.

Wee. So, as a ghost tire, you can activate the thing though. Eh,
can we bring them back in, Dave, or are they retired? [laughter]
Chat's loving that.
I do quite like being the ghost tire.
Yeah, it's fun, especially because you're faster and so you get to do like scouting stuff, right? You get to like
This actually solved. I was going to at some point during this try and like run out of health just to see what happened. So,
yeah.
Now, you know, now you know. respawn point scattered about the map.
Yeah,
there is a respawn. Okay, cool. Great. And since we're faster, we can go find it
potentially.
Will got tired. There you go.
All right.
Oh, I found one of the cacti with eyes.
Oh, wait. Hold on. Uh, important note. Yes, the ghost tires can activate mines. Don't know if that's intentional or not, but I can activate a mine and have it go off and do nothing.

They're the person. You're the person they send out ahead. Go clear all the mines.
Yeah. So far, every button related thing has been a trap. That's true. That's correct. Which is why Jeff will be testing all further button related things. So,
it's a trap.
Go.
So, fun fun dev fact. the very first build that we had the ghost tire in that at least I got to play the forward backwards just by mistake [laughter] were they were reversed and so it made it extra difficult to move them around.
That's fantastic.
Oh crap.
I've noticed that um in this procedural world things respawn over time. That is correct. I'm not imagining that.
You uh might be imagining that.
Oh, really?
Unless that's a bug. [laughter] Uh but
I feel like we've gone through areas and I've come back later and like going home on daytime. I feel like there was stuff

there that I would have seen,
right? So the part of the problem is that because there's not a lot of differentiation, it's very easy to get lost and feel like you're going in circles, right? Or that to that you're going to a place you've been before when you definitely haven't been there before. I found an oasis, by the way.
That's cool. Um, I might suggest slowing the tire down ever so slightly. It is a little unmanageably fast.
A little on the fast side.
Yeah.
Oh, shoot. [laughter]
I'm not damaging the package. It's fine.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, that's why the number's red.
Yeah, it's green. It's green. See, it's all good.
Green for good. Yeah. Um, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I like the car chests. I think those are cool.
What do we have over here? Oh, look. Is that the Why is it blind?

Oh, it's daytime. So, is there like interesting?
Oh, that's actually just the base. Never mind. Oh, there's what I was looking for. Look at that. Coming soon.
Oh, where is it?
Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Finally, we found it. I wanted to see this in game. This first time I've seen this.
Oh, wow.
You have to back up to get a view of it.
You got to really see it, though.
Oh, there. All right.
See that, Jeff?
Well, look. Look up to your left.
Up to my left.
Well, that's cool.
Oh, he's only got the legs. He needs to back up. Back up. Back up.
This is the new
Oh, hey, that's a giant robot walker thing. Oh, that's a horrifying giant robot walker thing. Great. Awesome. It's a carnivore. I understand.
Yeah, that one's complete with a a laser beam and a tractor. Tractor beam tractor beam.
A tractor beam. Oh, it's got the laser

beam. Tractor beam. It's just a tractor beam and a laser. You don't need to give both of them a beam. But yeah. Uh
yeah, but that's the new model.
That's the new model. Yeah.
Yeah. I haven't seen it in game yet.
I can see the beams. It's made of them. So, you know, having beams makes sense.
There's Here we go. Like great tone. See, like there's this We're right by the base. There's a whole chest here that right next to the road that I feel like we would have seen if we drove by it.
This is not the same base.
This is the second base.
Oh, okay.
Yeah. So, the bases are the same model, but we've been moving steadily in like a northnorwest direction.
For some reason, I thought we'd done a loop around. We're heading back
and I thought [clears throat] the same thing the first time. Um
Okay. Maybe like genuine just just a sign with a randomly generated stupid name for each station would help with that.
Or even like a different color beacon behind you and ahead of you like
heading towards green leaving red.
Mhm.
Yeah. Yeah.
There's so much repair and I can't use any of it.

Um,
so if you self-destruct and you're not in the base, are do you turn into ghost tire?
You do. Yeah.
Okay.
So, it's just it's like you're stuck in a spot and you can't get out of it and then,
you know, you want to be able to do something different.
Yeah.
Also, I'm experiencing like a weird thing where I think I'm running into like little loose edges of collision and just getting bumped weirdly. Oh, can't get into the base.
But I want to. If I get if I go,
you have to go in the gate.
Yeah, but if I go fast enough and high enough, what happens?
You won't make it. It's 100 meters tall.
Okay, great. Uh, I would see you've made an error there, which is you just said how tall it was in a public venue in a game with a physics engine. So, maybe make it some undisclosed amount significantly taller than that before the play test
because There will now I meant a

thousand.
Yeah, that sounds like
that sounds like a challenge. Correct. That's because it is, chat.
If one of the devs die, they probably feel like a third wheel right now. I guess that's what I I feel like a third. Actually, a second wheel.
I don't know. Okay, so we don't have the package value. What happens?
Uh,
you can come over here with me and get some more.
Yeah, you can't turn it in, right?
You can't. But I I might have just given us the value so we can turn it in.
Oh, okay.
Oh, it didn't update on my screen though.
Oh, look at that. It didn't. Interesting. And it's saying X.
Oh, you can't cheat.
I can't. [laughter]
Oh, you know what?
I bet I bet only I bet the host only the host can do that.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, it's doing like a non-local value.
Uh, yeah. That's That's clearly not updated.
Oh,
down.

Yeah.
Let's see.
We need
Dave, if you follow me
up here, there's um a good amount of loot.
Yeah. What you're hearing is you should go under the fence. Yes, that's exactly it. You should find a way to burrow under the fence.
Oh, there's a car.
Yeah. Once you start crafting mines and you're mine crafting.
I was uh I was looking around for a revive truck. Um or something that was clearly a revive.
Uh
yeah, I guess they could be useful to do that. I was just bombing around.
I mean, you know, like little calm A, little calm B, right? Part of part of I feel like the goal of play test with this is like actually trying to play the game. And the other part and I feel like chat, how many of you get into this, right? When you're doing like a play test for a game and you know it's a play test, sometimes you just want to mess around and see if you break stuff, right? Like that is always like one of my things. They're like, "You should do this quest. You should do this thing." And I'm like, "Yeah, that's cool. That's great. I love

that you think that I want to do that. What I really want to do is see if I can break your game. I just want to see like not maliciously, but like what happens if I do all the stuff, right? Like what happens if four of us are in a circle and the last one picks the first one up with the crane? Do we like physics glitch through the skybox? Right. Can I jump over the fence? Can I, you know, do whatever. Um,
all right. I think I've got enough.
You do. I'm I'm returning along the road. [clears throat]
Yeah, breaking stuff is great. It's wonderful. Cars are great at burrowing, less good at unbburing. Listen, as someone whose car has decided that it wants to be burrowed in ice, uh, you're correct, but please be correct. Quieter. [laughter] Uh, I literally can't get my car out right now. Um, I got plowed in and the Oh, no.
the the wall of ice that the snowplow made is taller than the rear bumper of my car and it is frozen solid from the top of it to the uh asphalt underneath and I cannot melt it because it is currently

10° below freezing here. I'm stuck. It's
It did take me a second, Will, to realize you weren't talking about your car in this game. No, no, no, no. We're talking about as as the only East Coaster here, I believe. I get to complain loudly and endlessly about this stupid storm.
What about a pickaxe? You know, don't have a pickaxe, handy. This is not Minecraft. I have to say for a game like this, whether you're play testing or not, like some of the fun is obviously I we talked about kind of at jank and friend slop, and I think that's definitely
Oh, hey. Uh, so [laughter]
speaking of J,
uh, it's it's it would appear, uh, that our base has been overrun by sentient cacti.
I think we've been bushwacked. [laughter]
I like it. Also, uh, you're aware that the road sign over here is textureless.

Uh, yes. Yes. So if we were proceeding further with this, my first recommendation would be that we increase our uh load size.
Yeah.
So we can collect more loot for the next run.
Correct. But unfortunately, I believe so this is this is as much as will be in tomorrow's play test, right? That people can go um express interest uh for either on Steam or over on Epic.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
And then at this point I think in the version because we're not actually quite using the play test build there a little dialogue that I know Dave was working on as I walked over here would pop up and just be like hey let us know what you think and then you can you can get your
if you give us your email address and fill it out you can which is like two questions I think. Um and one is multiple choice. Um but then you can get the confetti cannon code.
Nice.
Once the game is live.
Very nice. So, my biggest piece of feedback is I'm continually thrown off

by the fact that the H button turns on the lights and is not the horn.
That is, you know,
I mean, I know it also stands for headlight, but my mind is just keeps saying light.
Also,
I think it [clears throat] was partially that we wanted the horn just to be closer to your fingers as you were controlling it. The idea that you're not doing headlights off and on quite as often. That was the I [music] think the
Yeah. Yeah. And initially the horn was actually on tab, but
um from a from a hitting it I didn't have trouble with that. But when you did the steam overlay, unfortunately it would you would you would have your horn locked on when you're in the overlay cuz it would take control. It would
not fun.
The key up didn't register back to the game.
Uh Merk D suggests flashlight is F.
Yeah, that's true.
That wouldn't actually flip. Of course.
Although I will say I have a problem with controls.
I have found that I am flipping far less frequently than I am toggling headlights or Yeah. And of course Chad does want to

know if custom keybinds are will be in for the play test. And I assume of course that they're going to be in for the future because custom key
it is a future future feature but it is not in the play test.
Okay. But if you if you hit escape um to bring up the overall thing there.
That was impressive chat.
Then you hit controls. It'll show you the both the because you can do it with um keyboard and mouse, which is what we've been doing, but you can also do it with controller and you can kind of see the controls there, but you can't at this point.
Yeah. Um, I managed to successfully use the boost pad and land directly on one of the uh little stansions here. The little um yellow thing. That was sounded painful. Um, cool. Well, let's uh let's get you gentlemen back on screen and we'll we'll put the game away for a moment and we'll talk with chat about observations and and uh and about the game uh real quick. So, let's let's do that.

I remember which button I did. I did this button. Excellent.
Okay, so that's that's that's the first two levels of without a hitch. I I I gotta say,
you can see this time since it is procedurally generated.
Correct. Um
I love I love so much about this game. I particularly love how incredibly easy it is to damage the package. That is
it it does a great job at there's so much stuff. you're definitely going to make quota, but man is it really easy for your friends to screw up just enough for it to be funny over and over and over and over again um without being so infuriating that like you're not going to get your objective done.
And that bugged elevator actually told me that it was just the right amount. Like we all laughed as the package got squashed as opposed to there would be other games
Yeah.
where if you just spent a while collecting stuff and it all disappeared, you would be angry. repo
and the fact that it was universal laughter as opposed to anger tells me

that you're hitting that right balance
which has been that has been a work in progress because there was earlier versions including even the last public play test where one of the real pieces of feedback people had been like oh it's way too easy to damage the package and I'm losing too much and that doesn't feel good so having it feel good like having it happen in consequence but not too much consequence is kind of one of the more fine-tuning little this little That
was one of the upgrades basically protect take less damage from basically bumps, terrain, etc. Friends,
yes. Yeah, there was a there was a durability upgrade for the vehicle.
Okay.
Yeah.
I was just curious because that I could see if people got really annoyed by that, you could put that in as an upgrade and let somebody basically build towards a more a play style they liked slightly better.
Yeah, I
Oh, I can take off my trucker hat now. [laughter] Uh,
can I I didn't try it because I was

either dead or holding the package and didn't want to experiment too hard. Um, can you ram the mines? Like, can you can you punt them essentially as they're about to go off
because they take a second to activate?
No, you can pick them up and then you can throw the small the small ones you can pick them up and you can throw them.
Uh, the big ones you cannot pick up. The big ones you're best to just run away from.
Okay. I would
the first one that went run belly flop.
Perfect. [laughter]
Yeah. Yeah.
Perfect animation. I would suggest perhaps if if we're going towards like upgrades in the future, um I would pay I would steal an inordinate amount of money from my team uh for a cow catcher upgrade that let me punt mines just if we're throwing ideas at the wall. Like a like a fullon like train style cow catcher and I could just punt mines. Oh, so happy all day.
Well, is it punt or if you're doing the cow catcher, is it you're trying to like huck them off into the air in like a reverse skateboard jump?

Pornos. It could be little column A, could be little column B, right? But the mines are great because they the fact that they explode uh is fun and interesting and they make a loud boom uh and there's risk involved, but they're not intelligent enemies, right? are not
like you could easily make like a burrowing mine, right? Where there's just like the big spew like like sand trail kind of like worm sign coming out and then like all of a sudden the mine like pops out underneath you and you just explode. It feels bad, right? But they're stupid and they explode which is perfect
and you can lead them back to your friends because they go at about the right speed.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the funnest things we saw when doing testing was watching a player once that she discovered she could pick up the mine, she picked it up and immediately brought it back and threw it at one of the other players.
Yeah.
Is there anything else you could do given those circumstances? I feel like
the fact that it's not instant death and is honestly more um no pun intended,

full pun intended, minor damage, I think [laughter] facilitates that play style even more. Yeah. Um uh I did I did think that this was a good one which is um highlighting revive options for retired players. Some way to help guide players like cuz I wouldn't know that the revive is an option if I wasn't talking to you. So, some kind of like way to get people back in the game or to explain their state of being a little bit because that does feel I like that you could scout and I kind of like that you could trigger mines. Um, but knowing how to get back in, especially if your friends are struggling, like if you're the most experienced person and because of that you die. Um
yeah, you know, now that I I think about it, um I think the the the revive cars uh didn't spawn. I don't think I saw any single one in either of the
And so you do as you come across them when you're playing, if you go up to them as a regular car, it tells you that they're a revive spot.

Um but I think they were absent. Uh so um yeah, and that's definitely I mean as the tire having a way to see where they are, I think makes a lot of sense. Um, but I I do think I do think the fact that they were missing here was that they were actually completely absent.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
Yeah. I was looking. Yeah. I was like, I don't think it seemed
I think I saw one, but I think it was placed there on purpose. Some of the some of those points of interest that you go to, they have uh items there that are placed that are not generated randomly. They're part of that that point of interest. And so, I think I saw one there and that's what got me confused about it.
Yeah. Um,
I love this this question about um a timed mode because that's something we've actually been talking a lot about about like,
you know, does it randomly generate every run or is there like a set for a day and then you kind of try to do time challenges in it and try to get better at it was is a potential fun thing. So,
no no decision on, but we've certainly been talking about that as an idea.
Yeah.
Um, I I kind of had like a bit of a tactical question. How chunky are your

random generation tiles? Like is it are are you doing like small ones, medium ones, big ones? Are like points of interest placed? Are you doing is like the topography set and the things on the topography are generated? Is the topography itself generated? Like how granular or
like or is it a landscape within a pass where you put things on top and another pass where you put things on top of that? Like there's multiple ways of doing
um Yeah. So the the uh the terrain is generated first it first it has a a noise pass and then a path is generated from one side to the other for the base and then mountain ranges are added and then rivers are added and then the actual points of interest uh have attached to them. They actually have like their own height map pieces on them and they blend those in where they get placed. Um, and then I think the very one of the very last things is the actual like road itself is is then put onto the where the the road path had been carved onto the

terrain.
And and I assume at some point the the the algorithm just like takes the cars, the loot and everything and just goes sprinkle and just like throws it everywhere.
Yes. Yeah. There's a after after the terrain itself is generated, then there's a pass where all of the different bushes and cactuses and and uh car parts and and rocks and all of that go down uh after the terrain is finished.
Yeah. I I
part of the reason why they were in the base here where we showed up and it was all covered in cactuses. Uh and that's because of the order at which the first bases went down and the order at which the later bases went down that the first bases had been placed early enough the first time that nothing got spawned internally. But afterwards on the later bases because the base got moved, uh it hadn't been blocked yet. And that's a bug we're we're working on on sorting out. But uh
the base actually wasn't there until we got closer, which is why there's there was stuff there.
Oh yeah, that makes sense. So in order to prevent
I get the sense this will run on a toaster if you ask the toaster nicely.

Um
it'll run on a Steam Deck.
Yeah. Yeah, actually
a toaster, but Yeah. [laughter]
Yeah. I haven't tried Let's see. I haven't tried this most recent. Maybe I did on the weekend, but yeah. No, all the stuff has been
because I can imagine that that's a way to keep the map uh load down, right? Is to you just do the it's not there until you need it thing.
Yeah. And one of the things that, you know, we were looking at, we weren't 100% sure how long how many runs we wanted it to do, like for a complete game.
And so, um, we built it with the idea that it could actually go forever. Uh, so it'll just keep generating new trains and new trains and new trains until it hits a marker where we've said stop. But the way it's the way it's actually uh coded up that we could run it, we could just have it go and you could drive for ever
eventually. Yeah,
forever. Actually, one of the things, by the way, I would love to see a little more, and I know this is still early on, is I'm going to throw out a bad suggest, maybe a bad suggestion, like for the skybox, have it basically be almost like

a little bit of evening towards where the end is. Um, so basically there's a color shift like because I didn't even realize we didn't do a loop, like some visual distinction. And the same thing like at the night time have it be almost like a dawn kind of thing peeking up over the end base or a big visual distinction that tells me hey I'm going the correct way in addition to my compass.
It's Yeah, it's kind of interesting cuz like I'm pretty compassoriented for games like this, right? Minecraft, Hightail, other big open world exploration games and I realize um not everyone is, right? So that
I'm more of a mini map person. like because there wasn't a mini map I was constantly checking my direction sense was getting more confused.
Y um yeah uh someone's
these are just obviously suggestions not
Yeah. So someone's asking about seated runs as an interesting idea.
Thoughts, feelings? Maybe, maybe not. No. No is a fine answer because like I

uh if you're unfamiliar chat seated runs involve a lot of exposing some part of the RNG for that specific iteration of the level like in this case um we're talking about the noise pass earlier so that you have a key that you can put in to do the same thing again and you kind of have to build with like that in mind from the beginning
or to like share with your friends like man we just had this crazy run you guys should try this you know this level was fire kind of thing.
Yeah. I mean, so I mean the we are um everything is currently generated from a seed and if you squint and you look in the bottom corner, you can actually you can see the seed uh currently in the bottom right hand corner.
Um
well chat chat can't, but yes.
Well, they don't have the game.
They're looking at our pretty faces right now.
Yeah.
Um and I think Jeff Jeff's body or chair would block it in the thing, but yes,
I moved him so that uh that the they could see how fast I was going as well. It's down in the bottom right below the the speedometer.
It's it's definitely an idea uh to be

able to expose that to let people run through the uh the like replay ones that they like. I know I'd heard for I think was specifically in in Peak that they were doing that for speedruns that they would pick a seed and they override the seed with a mod and use that. And I think that's likely something that'll be able to be done here as well. Uh even if we don't expose it directly, I'm sure someone uh would be able to just reach in and mod that value. um because we're not we're not going to go out of our way to lock that out. So
yeah, fix seed versus random seed are two very big different is is probably one of the biggest divides in um randomly generated game speedrunning, right? So
yeah,
it's also a way some people check like for some of the say slay the spire championship runs, they'll expose the seed that the person did so that people can check and make sure that they weren't hacking along the way. like it's a thing, but also I feel like front slop games are not the same kind of level as like World Championship run for Slay the Spire or you know one of those other

mini mini games. It is interesting though because I feel like the game is absolutely friend slop and it's absolutely light and it's absolutely fun and it's absolutely silly. And I can also see a world where like there's a team of four people who just like lock in who are like all of the way locked in on like trying to escape the big robot death monster and like optimize it and go through it as fast as possible. And I could see that being fun even if that isn't your intended direction. So like I can I can get the desire for a seed or for some kind of like
and this is one of the tricky things on like small studio versus like EA is you have to start weighing the you know is it worth x amount of dev time to do this versus these 40 other features we could put in.
Yep. 100%. Yeah.
And that's always the always always always the trade-off is you always have more you want to put in than you have time and resources to do.
Yeah. People speedrun multiplayer satisfactory.
Yeah. why they enjoy it. Okay, great.

Awesome. More power to you.
When we did the first Steam Play test, there was um some folks who I was just watching the, you know, the category on Twitch, and some folks, you know, we we didn't know or have any interactions with, and it was just like a group of four people who were just buddies, but they also happened to be streaming. And they played it and kind of went through. And that one only had one level. Um and it was the one that we had actually been playing for a long time. Um, and they kind of they went through it a couple times and then they spent the next two hours iterating on that level with a they went and got a clock that they could kind of then put on their Twitch overlay to see how fast they could get through it, but they just kept doing it over and over and over again for a couple of hours. I I was quite impressed. It was it was quite a It was a It was a very satisfactory kind of thing to watch people do. [laughter] Mood on the face palm. Mood. Um, yeah. I I think uh there I think the the thing

that is incredibly evident to me is that the bones are funfocused, right? That like everything about this is the right amount of chaotic and the right amount of nonsensical um to create as many ridiculous moments with their friends as possible. Um, I am kind of tempted to see how I like playing it alone, but I think the answer is it's not for me alone because it's sort of like solo I I'm actually thinking of um Oh, what's the name of the game? It's not demonologist. It's Phasmophobia. It kind of feels like solo phasmophobia. Yes, you can. Yes, some people are incredibly good at it and it's very challenging. And it also to me feels like not the point because to me in my mind the point of Satisfactory is laughing at your friends as they get their next snap by a ghost. Um, and that this feels like the the moment is someone's got to get blown up by the demon elevator thing.

Who's it going to be? That's going to be hilarious. Um,
but I think what I'm hearing is we should break the elevator on purpose. No, I think you should have a 50/50 chance of the elevator giving you something good or laughing demonically and then chomping whoever's inside.
You're right up into the sky.
Yeah. Right.
Or holding the button for the elevator. The occasional option to get a reward by stepping off suddenly right as their friend gets on.
Right. Yeah.
Yes. Yes.
We may or may not have some achievements that are in that very vain.
Great. Awesome. add a second button that says do not press like this. It's good. Yeah,
lots of lots of big friendly red buttons. Um, okay. I think we've managed to address all of the the questions, comments, feedback from chat. Um,
you said that this will be out in a play test tomorrow. Can you tell people how they can sign up for that?
Tomorrow, by the way, if you're watching

at a different time, will be January the 30th of the year 2026.
Yeah.
Yes. And the year of our Lord Gabin 2026
at at 400 PM Pacific time is the is the target.
It's got the Whitaker guarant Whitaker warranty.
Oh yes. Yes. You'll be able [laughter] to play at 4 p.m.
Yeah.
Barring elevator disasters.
Yeah. And Yeah. And you can play it on you can play it on Epic Epic Games. You can play it on Steam. There's crossplay between the two of them. So some friends can be on one, some friends can be on the other. Uh so yeah, and you can go to the those respective pages. You can wishlist the game, too. That's always a nice thing. Helps us out if you wishlist the game. That's always good. Uh, and then, yeah, check it out. You can There's a survey in there you can fill out. And there's a I think a box that's just open, too, that people can kind of let us know more question or more things if they want. Right.
Yes. And if you enjoyed this, you can also leave uh on the YouTube particularly
comments on about the game since Twitch

is almost impossible to check for any kind of thing where YouTube is made for people watching videos later and leaving comments.
Fun fact, Jeff, they actually deprecated that feature.
I remember. Yeah.
Ah, Twitch.
We're also uh there is a Discord for the game and just behind the scenes things that get shared there. So, the without a hitch Discord, uh, which I think I gave you that link, Will,
I, uh, yes, I named it something very clever and then forgot what clever thing I named it.
Well, we can throw it in the YouTube, uh, description.
Yeah, there we'll put all those relevant links.
We'll put all the links in the YouTube description.
Yep. Down there. Um, yeah, I think that is going to going to do it for our stream today. Gentlemen, thank you so much.
Um, links. Okay, gotcha.
For for bringing this excellent game. uh to um to our attention. I'm really looking forward to it. Friends at home, please go sign up for the play test on Steam, on Epic, wherever. Give your feedback. It's a lot of fun. Um

don't forget to skybox your friends, right? I feel like that's it. Uh until next time, everybody. Uh take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and we will see you all later with, you know, something else. Uh
say bye to the people everybody.
Bye to the people everybody.
Bye. [music]
[music]