Life on Mars: From Starfield to designing a Co-Op Base Building Game

Are you ready to journey through the universe of game development with Scott and Matt? This episode promises a thrilling exploration of the gaming cosmos, beginning with the recent release of Starfield and its comparison with Baldur's Gate 3. We navigate through the nebula of online reactions and delve into the intricate realms of game development and review bombing. As we orbit Bethesda’s successful game development strategies, we seek answers to high gamer expectations and discuss the mixed reactions Starfield has generated.

As we further traverse the gaming galaxy, we brainstorm an innovative game concept. Imagine a cooperative yet competitive city-building base management system. Two players, as aspiring mayors, work together for their city's prosperity but are simultaneously fierce rivals. We ideate on adding rogue-like elements and the potential of a collaborative effort between a space-dwelling and a ground-based player. The icing on the cake? A planetary defence game with AI or robot players, security camera feeds, and first-person gameplay that keeps you on your toes! Join us on this exhilarating ride through the gaming universe. Your seatbelt is fastened, right?

Thanks for listening and please leave us a review and subscribe if you enjoyed it. It really helps us out. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gaming-blender/id1597738101

Also please get in touch with us at @gamingblendpod or thegamingblenderpod@gmail.com with your ideas for new games and challenges.

We have begun to update our YouTube channel with video playthroughs and we hope to put more up there soon https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZTPuScm5BTf8DdwvaCj0jQ

Keep blending!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Do be, do be, do. Welcome back to the gaming blender podcast with me, matt and Scott. Hello Scott, how are you doing? I'm very good, how are you? Anyway, that's enough, couldn't?

Speaker 2: 0:16

know what we're talking about of you Couldn't resist.

Speaker 1: 0:18

Welcome back to the hypothetical gaming podcast, where we make wonderful hypothetical, hypothetical, hypothetical, hypothetical hypothetical games. You are not really weak. Yes, I know, I named the podcast. This is my baby and I messed it up. Anyway, scott, have you been? How's your week? How's your life? How are you? How's your?

Speaker 2: 0:33

fridge. There's just some. There's some big. How's my fringe? Well, cut now as you can see, yes, I miss a fringe. Well, I can imagine a lot of big questions there. How is my life? Absolutely fine. All the other ones? How is my game?

Speaker 1: 0:50

has gaming week gaming week because Scott, before we go any further, starfield has released what do you think of it? Haven't played it, I am so I've played it. You've been going on about it so much.

Speaker 2: 1:02

I know, but I haven't. Baldur's Gate three hasn't got his claws out.

Speaker 1: 1:07

I know I know I was you reignited because I was getting really irritated about the fact that every time we spoke about gaming it was Baldur's Gate, our starfield. I suppose this is kind of the floor out doing a bi weekly gaming podcast. You don't have enough time to get through it.

Speaker 1: 1:20

And then all of a sudden, what pops up on my news feed is an Imagine Dragons banger for, but for the for Starfield Children of the Sky, which is Imagine Dragons at their best, because they're taking themselves far too seriously, which is always Imagine Dragons at their best. I thought I'm excited to talk to Scott about this and you haven't played it.

Speaker 2: 1:39

No, I haven't, but it looks really good. Obviously, the scores that it's getting are not as good as Baldur's Gate, but Baldur's Gate scores and reviews are like well, next level good.

Speaker 1: 1:51

I think we should part the reviews thing, because one thing and I tweeted this earlier this week and I had a, and I think the Miss Tonic Playhouse actually responded to my tweet about this up our sister podcast. But they, I said, I just don't understand the reaction to Starfield. I cannot gauge it. Online it's got decent reviews. In terms of when I say decent, that's probably giving the injustice sort of eight to nine to ten, but online there does seem to be a huge amount of hate to it, a huge amount of hate to it. Along Twitter there's a lot of people that are showing or is this what you call next gen? And obviously showing the classic Bethesda face engine, but I can't gauge it. I can't gauge what the response has been.

Speaker 2: 2:31

Is it from? Are those, are those reviews from people, or are they from?

Speaker 1: 2:37

professional reviews. Well, no, they are people. So there have been two sides to this, the first of which there are PlayStation fanboys, review bombing, which, as a PlayStation fanboy, I 100% condone, and it irritates people. Review bomb and it very like they do, for God's sake, versus con years ago, which really irritates me. Perfectly entertaining movie which came that became the ire of people getting annoyed about the side of us not being reinstated. It's just so stupid as a concept. Yeah, you have that.

Speaker 1: 3:03

But then I think what you do is you have people who have bigged it up in their imagination and, like they, it's still running on the old sky is still running on the same game engine that Skyline worked on. It has its limitations. Even the people who made it came out and said I think, as Microsoft said, it's not going to be the Beale and Endle sky for that sky for Starfield is not going to be the killer app that people buy Xbox is for. It's just was never going to be that. I think it's the pinnacle of Bethesda, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is 100%. It doesn't mean it's a 90. It doesn't mean it's a borders game. It means it is brilliantly entertaining game, but it is the limit of what they can do right now, which is not as negative as it is, but is yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:48

I think people forget that between game developers there are very there are massive differences in terms of how all game developers make games and what they prioritize and what they think is important. If you buy an Ubisoft game, you're going to be climbing a lot of watch towers. There's just an end of it. Ubisoft believe that to make a game, players must climb watch towers.

Speaker 1: 4:11

Okay, there's a great sense of gravity.

Speaker 2: 4:13

Yes, and the map has to be unintelligible. Fine Ubisoft, that's great, okay.

Speaker 2: 4:19

And actually sometimes they're quite entertaining but I'm not a massive fan For Larry and they like to make games that have a sense of humor and they like to. They like games to be polished and they like games to be, you know, high quality. Bethesda like games to be played over and over and over and over again. They like to give people enough of a free reign, enough of a world space, enough flexibility with that, so that that game gets played for years, like Skyrim and oblivion before it and more when now. So I think people forget that they play a game like Baldur's Gale. They play a completely different title and they take that quality and the good things about that game and they interpose it on something like Starfleet and they go. Well, why isn't it good here? Why aren't the graphics good? Because Bethesda don't care about graphics. They care about giving you like an amazing space sim that modders can spend 10 years adding stuff to.

Speaker 1: 5:25

I think that's what's interesting, because if you rewind to pick an example with a game that I think, actually what was what? Me being a pessimist? I thought Starfleet was going to be the next and the name has escaped me. Oh, no man's guy, the name, not no man's guy. No, no, not man's guy, because I recently replayed no man's guys and I just turned it on. The other day. Me and you have spent 60 hours together playing on the new man's guy. It is a million times better than you left it a couple of years ago. Yeah, that's great. The game that I'm thinking of is the game that was made by the people that made Bethesda, whose name I cannot remember.

Speaker 2: 6:01

Oh, the other space game. It was a kind of space game as a jetpacking game, but it died on its feet.

Speaker 1: 6:08

Not the outer worlds, no, no, no, because that is made by, not Bethesda, that is made by Bethesda. Spin off obsidian. I'm not thinking from sitting. Who made Mass Effect? Who made Mass Effect? Bioware, bioware, thank you, bioware. Who then made what was the name of the game, anthem Anthem, thank you. Bail this out to the proverbial there.

Speaker 1: 6:30

Anthem, because Anthem had a huge amount of build up and the reason why it was interesting is because Anthem was an example of a game developer taking what they do well, which is storytelling, and trying to crowbar in multiplayer, and that's why it was six of one, half a dozen the other and it was all meh. So I think it fell flat on its face for many reasons. And there's a fabulous. There's a fabulous article. I believe it online. I think it's not Bloomberg, it's by Jason Tribe in his previous employees to Bloomberg. Can't remember who that was, but it's a fantastic article about how it was a failed development. Now, it moved around multiple people. They never got it right, but I think Bethesda might have done it right here from what you're saying, because it sounds like they are specializing in what they know that they are good at. Because they're good at it, it's a good game.

Speaker 2: 7:16

Yeah, and from the looks of it, if you look at the Steam reviews, they are Very positive. It's not like 80 something percent in the positives, which is which is really good. It's probably what it deserves and I think once I finally de-entangle myself from Baldur's Gate 3, which has got all of its tentacle hooks into me, I will play it and I will probably love it and I will probably spend I mean, I don't imagine spending the amount of time I've spent in Skyrim on it, because that's impossible but, yeah, I think it would be something that I really, really enjoy and lots of people will as well.

Speaker 1: 7:52

So I think that's a nice optimistic moment to end our sort of pregame banter before we actually are creating our game, because this is the hypothetical gaming podcast, where we will create a hypothetical game for you every time we have an episode. How exciting is that? I'm over the moon. Can you see the smile upon my face? So we will create a brand new game for you, randomly. What we're going to do is we're going to roll some dice and from that we're going to pick a game genre and then a couple of game mechanics, then even a narrative. We're going to mush it all together and create a brand new game, off which Scott is the chief designer. Head honcho man Fuhrer probably not Fuhrer. That was a bit extreme. I think they're slightly extreme.

Speaker 1: 8:31

It was a slightly extreme one to go to, but I have already rolled said dice as Scott is giving me hosting notes, while he seems to be tucking into what I can only assume is lunchbox, with the noise it's making in the background.

Speaker 2: 8:41

I'm getting a pen ready because all my pens have disappeared.

Speaker 1: 8:46

All your pens have been put in lunchboxes. Excellent, so we have rolled for our genre and number 19. Oh, what's? That 19, which is you want to know one by one, don't you? Yes, number 19, which is a base management city builder game. Okay, we've done a few of these in the past. I like them. They're a game type that I choose, like if I was having a quiet evening with a glass of whiskey, this is the kind of game I'd go to.

Speaker 2: 9:13

Okay, base management Yep.

Speaker 1: 9:15

So then we have rolled for our mechanics and number 34 and the number 16. Okey, dokey, what are they? We're going to reroll one of them because we've had it very recently, that's fair, and the other one I forgot the number.

Speaker 2: 9:34

You can get me 34 and 16.

Speaker 1: 9:38

I am going to reroll both of them for the sake. This is going well. This is going well so far. Right? Okay, we've got one and we've got two. Okay, so we've got five and 32. Okay, so lovely. Right?

Speaker 1: 9:53

So we have a base management system with roguelite elements. Okay, rogue, like for reminder for those who don't know about it, it is. That's a system where, essentially, you will die and go back to the start the game. These can vary upon the way that you can go back with the same materials or you can start the game totally afresh. A good example of this is the game Hades. Please check that game out if you haven't checked out already. It's a fabulous game. The other one is a co-op focus Interesting. We haven't had a co-op focus very much. I actually think we had these two. We had rogue like and a co-op focus together. In one of our first 10 or so episodes. We had Again, where we made a one in a. It was set in a spaceship, I think, and every time you died, you had an AI system that was learning about you and you talked to them, Wasn't it?

Speaker 1: 10:46

the crewmates were getting taken over by AI slowly, yeah, I think so, and each time, yeah, something along those lines, but this one is obviously a base management system, whereas that one, I believe, was an ice cream simulator, was it? No, I don't know. I can't remember what it was. You asked me. I couldn't remember who BioWare were earlier on.

Speaker 2: 11:05

I can't remember what we did two years ago. Can you add ice cream simulator into our?

Speaker 1: 11:09

I will add. Do you know what I'm going to add it in? I'm going to add an ice cream simulator. Please do, ice cream simulator is going in.

Speaker 2: 11:17

Okay, I mean there's a lot of scope with this, purely because you can do any setting genre with this and that would work. So I think let's park the setting for now and maybe focus on how you squeeze together, how you make a base management game go up.

Speaker 1: 11:49

I think that was the angle I was going to go, I think.

Speaker 2: 11:52

Because how do you divide it up and how do you? Yeah, how do you make that?

Speaker 1: 11:58

Do you know? What I find I've always found interesting, and this is Do you remember the old TV series Time Commanders? Yes, so Time Commanders for those listening not in the UK was a TV series where it was essentially Rome Total War. Before Rome Total War was released, it was a TV series demo where you'd play the tactics and what they'd have is two generals and two lieutenants, and the generals would just shout instructions at their tenants who would action it to two blokes sat on a computer. Now what I'm imagining is I'm imagining Imagine if we have a base management system where one of you was mayor and the other one was like in a department, and that you were telling them what to do.

Speaker 1: 12:32

Okay, so you had no form of communication apart from offering edicts. So can you say your mayor has told you to do this, and you'd be like I'm sorry, so say, if you and me were playing together, a new mayor, I'd get a message saying Scott wants you to fix the sewage system and I'll go. Well, yes, but I kind of like that sort of. It'd be quite nice to maybe have the oh, that you could almost. I know this is not you could do it co-op, but with a spin. If you're a city builder you could have it. So you were both running for mayor of a city.

Speaker 1: 13:03

So it's both cooperative and also versus, because you can get elected, and when one of you gets elected it has power over the other one and you have to do your job well. That your fellow mayor gives you, but you also have to not do it well enough that he gets re-elected. You have to make sure you get the other one that gets elected. So it's a sort of poker play. That would be quite funny. Not co op, though, is it? It's not, but it is co-op because you're working together to make sure your city is good. But there's that other ulterior motive because you have to do your job well, you can always add in an extra element. That is We've done this before like cities under siege, which maybe don't do that, or do a different, if you have a bigger overarching theme, but all the while you're sort of battling within it to make sure you're on top.

Speaker 2: 13:49

It could work. I think it would be quite limited though, because you're, do you Only, because if you think, if you've got to add in a rogue-like element to it, where you have to go back to the start. Maybe, Do you know what I mean? You'd be like quick run for mayor. You lost. Start again.

Speaker 1: 14:05

Well, no, no, but that's the thing. Maybe that is the rogue-like element is the reset of that. You run for mayor, you lost, you then get put to the doldrums while your other, where your mate bosses you around, essentially for a period of time. Then the election restarts, you have another shot at it and then it could swap over if you run your election well, if you've done your job well, or it could not. So the rogue-like element is almost this rerunning for mayor. I don't know whether that's me bending the rules too much and saying it's not quite rogue-like enough because you're not going back fully to the start.

Speaker 2: 14:35

I don't think if it was, if it was, you go right back to that. If it was like you said and it's kind of like, once the mayor or mayor or mayor or mayoral race is done, if that's a word, don't worry, we won't address that word.

Speaker 1: 14:53

What was that word? Mayoral, mayoral.

Speaker 2: 14:56

Mayoral race is done, then it might not feel like it's enough of a mechanic. Do you know what I mean? It doesn't feature. You know, like with Hades, it happens all the time. This is, I see it's too slow a mechanic. It's too, I mean it's a bit more of a slow burner mechanic. So I'm not sure. So base management and city builder are two, I would argue, slightly different things. Base management, I would say, is a lot more can be, could be a first person game, because I have an idea where it's a lot smaller and then city builders a little bit more.

Speaker 2: 15:33

Third person strategy is.

Speaker 1: 15:36

Does that make sense? What's your idea? It does make sense, and I think I have an idea that works here. Hang on. So you are a person. You are a person such as a two sections you have a city and then you have a area set out in space. One of you manages the city, one of you manages the area set out in space.

Speaker 2: 15:56

I thought I knew you. So one person is in, one person does stuff in first person, the other person does stuff in third person.

Speaker 1: 16:03

Oh no, I wasn't thinking that.

Speaker 2: 16:04

No, you weren't thinking that.

Speaker 1: 16:07

No, I was thinking, I like where your head's at. Okay.

Speaker 2: 16:11

Let us return to that. We'll come back to my bit.

Speaker 1: 16:14

So you are building a city. However, you are well aware that there is a meteorite headed your way. Okay, now the meteorite can be stopped by your team in space. However, the team in space are relying on the success of your city to get trade and goods that you can send up to space for them to build something that will intercept the meteorite. So, essentially, the person in space manages the space base to make sure that that's all ready. The person on the ground has to be successful, because if the town is successful in trading and becomes a successful town, then they send resources up, which allows for improvement on the space base to destroy the meteorite. Okay. And then, obviously, if the meteorite is the kind of end game, if it gets through, then you lose or you have the ability to stop it. You're building up to this one key event.

Speaker 2: 17:03

Yeah, where does the roguelite bit come in?

Speaker 1: 17:09

Well, if you lose? If you lose, you go back to the start. You have to rebuild your city from scratch, because the meteorite hits it and destroys it.

Speaker 2: 17:19

Yeah, could be a bit of a slow burner.

Speaker 1: 17:22

Again, it is a slow burner, but I do think the roguelite is valid there, because if you have a failure, you just keep going, keep going, keep going, and then if you have a failure, you do go back to the start. And because it's a city builder, I think the roguelite has to be a slightly slower burn, because otherwise you don't make any progress. It can't be like oh, I built a house, it's gone, true, so what was your?

Speaker 2: 17:44

idea. I'm intrigued by the first and third person, so I think this could be quite entertaining in that you have and it's based on the same idea that you have someone who is directing and someone that is doing Okay, okay, and it works on the provider that the person who is directing has more information at hand.

Speaker 1: 18:03

Oh, I think I know where you're going with this.

Speaker 2: 18:05

You can see things in third person and they can see the grand vision. The person who is on the ground is locked in first person.

Speaker 2: 18:14

I love this so you're telling the person on the ground what to do, and so can only act on the orders they're being given. But they have no contact, they don't have the full context, they can only see what they can see, and so I think you could make a very funny, albeit also very frustrating, game. You'd have to play it if you'd make sure you need to make sure that you don't end friendships.

Speaker 2: 18:40

So where's the word roguelike element with this. So I think maybe you make it so that there's some sort of existential threat. Let's say, let's say, meet you right, let's keep with that idea Okay, whereby if you don't work in tandem well enough, either one or both of you will get killed by whatever. This strike is Okay, right? Let's say you live on a planet that is continuously hit by meteors and you constantly have to try and protect yourself from being killed, and it's almost as simple as we need to build a planetary shield there. It needs to go right there and you have to tell me yeah, it needs to be this big, and then they build it. Oh, that's actually really fun. I really like that because I love the idea of going no left man.

Speaker 2: 19:32

I'm like why is it there? The meteor's coming. That could be very funny. You know what I mean. I'm trying to think of a threat and how to make it narrative. I think if you're on a alien planet.

Speaker 1: 19:48

You can have multiple threats. You can have threats from land, you can have threats from the land and that's kind of, if you have meteorites, lizard men, lack of oxygen, all these threats to your civilization that could kill it off and destroy your city, and this bloke is essentially you're directing this bloke to go around and fix.

Speaker 2: 20:04

That's actually a really funny idea, actually, and I really really like it Because you could be on like if you're in the third person mode. You could say, be in a space station or a lunar module, something that orbits the planet, so you can see everything. And you look down and you see there's a tidal wave coming in, yes, or that's a sandstorm. But obviously the guy on the ground is like is it what it's?

Speaker 1: 20:33

almost like you're in a control tower and you're getting loads of and to add to the gameplay as well, you can maybe, rather than just seeing the threats, say you have a lot of screens up that you can dictate, you can jump between going right, I've got some security cameras out there. I've also got sort of wave fronts about how the how the Tetonic plates are doing, etc. So I can judge whether the earthquake is coming. So you have all this additional information. Yeah Well, the person that down is just ready for building stuff and doing the placing that could be. That's an exceptional idea.

Speaker 2: 21:04

I think it would be quite funny if you you can make it even more roguelike by saying that the person on the ground can die pretty much like all the time they could. They could fall off cliffs, that he get attacked by animals and all this sort of stuff, and so you know, obviously, if that happens, then they need to send a replacement. So if you make that the person who's on the ground, or actually both of them, if you make them robots or if you make them sort of artificial intelligence, something that you can mass reproduce and send another one down that gives you another.

Speaker 2: 21:33

So if you know you get killed by what you're on the ground, you're in first person, you get attacked by wildlife and you get killed. The person in the top has to then send another one down, which then obviously, if there's impending doom, you could be in the middle of like quick, get the build the wall, build the wall.

Speaker 1: 21:53

Oh my God, I'm in Egypt. You want to build a great idea for a game mode, a specific game mode. I'm not saying this is the whole game. Yeah, If you played online, each time you lose your person on the ground, a new person gets injected in that you've not been working with. So essentially you have this thing of like who is this moron I'm working with? The previous guy was so much better, so you just have this constant rotation of who. Each time you lose a bloke, a new guy comes in to start working. So it really tests your teamwork to throw them straight in.

Speaker 2: 22:25

I think, setting wise. I think if you you can make it really basic and just say you are, whether you're actually alive or whether you're robots or whatever it ends up being, you can say that you are creating like a base on the first ever humanity's first base on Mars, for example.

Speaker 1: 22:46

Well, I'm going to stop you there. I'm going to stop you there. The one cause, the narrative role, came up. Your came up Trump's your way.

Speaker 2: 22:53

No no, no, it came up.

Speaker 1: 22:54

Trump's your way because because he says not having the right screen open, Excellent. So this is going to be a rise and fall of power. Rise and fall of power, yes, but that, I feel, just plugs perfectly into the rise and fall of this, this settlement city.

Speaker 2: 23:21

It could be a literal rise and fall of power, in that every time it goes wrong, you lose.

Speaker 1: 23:28

No, no no, no, oh no, we're out of power.

Speaker 2: 23:32

The rise and fall of power.

Speaker 1: 23:36

I think it kind of works. To be honest, I think the first colonization is Mars. You have all these problems and you are I mean, you can add a bit of comedy onto this. Maybe this is the sequel to the of Mars game that I mean repeat last month, so where you essentially you're just on Mars and it's your first job and you've just been promoted and you're looking after this colony and you've got your links to the lower, the guys on the ground, essentially, and you're just telling them guys, please help me out.

Speaker 1: 24:01

This is going all wrong. You need to help me, yeah, because I don't necessarily think this is massively plot heavy.

Speaker 2: 24:08

It's going to be a sort of rogue like how?

Speaker 1: 24:09

far can you get? How much infrastructure can you build? And I don't know whether there is, I don't. Is there an end game? Is there an end?

Speaker 2: 24:16

game. So I think what you could do is you could make it where it's a bit like satisfactory, where oh, I love satisfactory, where you have a list of objectives, okay, and you can choose how to get. You could do certain stages at certain times, depending on which ones you want to do. And I think, if you, if you may, if you give the players at the start a blueprint from whoever is, whichever company it is, that's setting up this base on Mars, you say right, this is what we want you to, and it includes all of these things, and you know, some of them can be very simple.

Speaker 2: 24:53

Something could be like outlandish and will require a lot of time, and you just say if you finish this, you're done, well done, you win the game. However, completing that, because there are so many hazards and so many things either kill you or destroy what you're making, it's really hard to do it. You have to like, you have to be working as an absolute dynamo team and you have to not make too many mistakes, because I think you can get. This is one of those games where you can get to a point where you feel like a decent settlement and then mistakes will just snowball on you, you'll just have loads of really quick deaths, and then everything you've made will just start crumbling to dust.

Speaker 1: 25:34

But what? But when you complete it, does it just tip the box and complete it? I mean it could almost have, like I don't know, just sort of maybe some tranquility come across screen. I like the idea I was just thinking as well of having you being able to change roles during the game.

Speaker 2: 25:47

Oh yeah, definitely Definitely.

Speaker 1: 25:48

So you have like control power and you control tower, but the part guy in first person has to make it to the control tower. Or maybe you've got, maybe you've got shifts, you've got compulsory shifts.

Speaker 2: 25:58

Oh, that's good, I like it. So you each have a 12 hour. So you each have a 12 hour in-game shift.

Speaker 1: 26:04

Yeah, and essentially you have to. So that would be a good reason of making sure, like my shifts about to end, I'd better be close to that control tower or else we're going to have a massive change over time. That's going to take forever to be back out there.

Speaker 2: 26:15

Yeah, and then that gives you the opportunity to do both. I like that, which would be good as well, because you're never going to get this. You're never going to get two people who are exactly the same, and so every time you switch over, there'll be a completely different way of thinking.

Speaker 1: 26:35

You know what I mean, and the conclusion is that you'd have to be so in tuned, but by the time you get to the next shift, maybe you know how the other person thinks, or something like that. So there's definitely, but say me and you played, we'd take about three or four times. We like OK, scott doesn't pay attention to the earthquake, neither at all. No, so I'm going to have to be on that. And Matt really, really doesn't pay attention to detail when building those walls, so we're going to keep an eye on the walls.

Speaker 2: 26:57

Matt keeps forgetting to look at the planet to see if there are any incoming incoming natural disasters.

Speaker 1: 27:02

He seems to be writing his autobiography up in there. I'm not quite sure.

Speaker 2: 27:06

Matthew, why is there a sandstorm and why don't I know about it?

Speaker 1: 27:09

Oh, I couldn't see it anything. The map I thought was a desolate feature, that was the sandstorm. Oh, yes, and I think that sounds good. I'm going to say all of the things we've gone through here. Well, you think of a name?

Speaker 1: 27:22

Ok, so we have a base management roguelike co-op game which we set on a far away planet maybe Mars, maybe another planet, maybe a spin off planet but you are building a settlement. However, the settlement gets beset by hazards lack of oxygen, beasties, meteorites, all sorts all coming. But you, you and your matey, are fighting against it, one in third well, not in third person, but one with the overarching SimCity-esque view of the city, working out where the, where the threats are coming from, and sending the matey in first person round to try and fix it, who obviously has a completely different view to yours. So it is completely down to communication and making sure that you're in the right place at the right time. These you will shift where you're and swap your other bloke, as is needed because you have a certain shift. So you've got to fulfill, making sure you both fill the same roles and when you defeat, when you last a certain amount of time, you will survive.

Speaker 1: 28:13

And the game is called Idiots on Mars. Idiots on Mars, they. They sing it on the spin off of Mars. I see idiot on Mars. I know that.

Speaker 2: 28:24

You think?

Speaker 1: 28:25

come on, actually this is common, this be serious. I don't think it'd be cool. Idiots on Mars. I feel like it's it, the Mars project.

Speaker 2: 28:35

Yes, that could work. Or why is this so hard? That's not getting to that one. Oh no, I didn't mean it that way. Let's avoid that name, please.

Speaker 1: 28:50

I'm sorry, that's funny.

Speaker 2: 28:53

Oh, I'm not sure I do like On Mars. I like having the title On Mars. You like On Mars, maybe you should be Settlers On Mars.

Speaker 1: 29:04

Settlers On Mars. You're not resettling, though are?

Speaker 2: 29:06

you. You're just kind of like You're just the base builders.

Speaker 1: 29:11

Well, actually could just be called On Mars. Contractors On Mars Could just be called On Mars. He says Well, quickly going back through to find what we called the last game On Mars, you called it Henschman On Mars, henschman On Mars yeah, that was it. Well, we'll remember. Well, if it's not Henschman, but maybe it is a different subset, it is the Cities On Mars, or or Life On Mars, life On Mars, life On Mars.

Speaker 1: 29:41

We're stealing from one of the excellent TV shows of the 2000s. That was an excellent TV show. It was excellent Anyway. So that was Life On Mars. I hope you enjoyed that podcast and enjoyed listening to our Witterings. If you enjoyed this at all, please subscribe to us and drop us a review, because we always really appreciate that, and listen to all the other wonderful episodes out there. If you feel like you want to set us a wonderful, tough challenge, then also get in touch with us at the Gaming Blend pod on Twitter and ask us what game you'd like us to make. You can also drop us an email, which will be in the notes description. So please get in touch. We love to hear from you. In the meantime, I have been Matt and I have been Scott. Thanks again. So much for listening and keep on blending everybody. Bye-bye, bye-bye now.