The Gaming Blender
Welcome to the Gaming Blender Podcast, the Game Design podcast where hosts Matt and Scott combine random game genres and elements to create exciting hypothetical games.
Join us on a creative journey as we blend puzzle-solving with action-adventure, strategy with role-playing, and more. Each episode takes you through our process, discussing gameplay mechanics, captivating storylines, and immersive worlds.
Whether you're a gaming enthusiast or a budding developer, our podcast offers endless inspiration. Explore new narratives, intriguing characters, and engaging gameplay dynamics. The Gaming Blender Podcast challenges traditional gaming norms, delivering fresh ideas and thought-provoking concepts.
Join Matt and Scott as imagination meets innovation, forging the future of gaming. Tune in, subscribe, and unlock the gateway to endless possibilities!
The Gaming Blender
Horizon's Haul: When Ubisoft meets Dark Souls
Fancy setting us a gaming challenge? Get in touch here!
Get ready to embark on an exciting journey into the expansive universe of esports and gaming with our friend and special guest, Gareth. We promise you an enriching conversation that not only breaks down the rising prominence of esports in mainstream media but also delves deep into the responsibilities shouldered by game developers and players alike. The thrill doesn't end there, as we also tap into Gareth's personal gaming experiences, including his introduction to the popular game, League of Legends, and his anticipation for its upcoming second season.
We dare to push the boundaries of imagination with this week's hypothetical game! How would you feel about building towers and platforms as in Jump King, or crafting beds in a game that resets the world? Or what about the prospect of creating a destructible game world that reacts to your actions? And if that wasn't engaging enough, we even explore the concept of an inverted tower with checkpoints marked by bonfires! The risks, rewards, and strategies involved in these mechanics are sure to stir your gaming spirit.
But gaming isn't just about mechanics, is it? It’s also about the narrative. Imagine a game with a 'forbidden love' storyline, providing not just entertainment but an emotional end goal. Picture a world where every action of yours has a ripple effect on the environment, creating an endless loop of survival games. Gareth gives an insightful take on what a capitalist system in gaming could look like (yes, really!). So, brace yourself for an enlightening and thought-provoking episode that will make you look at gaming from an entirely fresh perspective.
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!
Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Gaming Blender, the hypothetical gaming podcast. I'm here with, again not Scott, I'm here with friend of the podcast, gareth. Say hello, gareth. Hi, yeah, that'll do. Thank you very much, gareth. Goodbye, I'm here with a friend of the podcast, gareth, who's filling in for Scott, because Scott is still off doing far more important things than I could ever dream to be, so I would hate to clamp his style. So we've got Gareth who's joining us on the podcast today, and I'm very excited because Gareth plays a completely different type of video game to me, don't you, gareth? Yep, I'm generally lots of different types.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you're more of a sort of you play a bit of League of Legends, but what I really like is you know more about esports than I do, esports being not a buzzword at the moment, but they're definitely a growing market, because I was around yours the other day and you kept saying to me you said I'm going to catch the World Cup, and I thought does he mean cricket, does he mean rugby? And then no, no, it was the Esports World Cup. That I had no idea about and it was. What was it you were going to watch?
Speaker 2:It was the ALGS, like Apex Legends Global Series. So it's like that's what the ALGS stands for. It's like Apex Legends Global Series and that specific one. Normally there's three in a year, so there's the first split, second split and then there's the championship, which is like, basically you have to be successful in both the first split and the second split to get into the actual championship. So it's basically like the big deal one.
Speaker 1:And yeah, that coincided with a couple of events. Do you think it's ever going to take off properly? I know it's like there's a lot of money involved at the moment, but do you think it's ever going to cross into the mainstream? Because I was expecting it to happen by now. I was expecting to have a sort of event and it'd be more broadcast, more what? Freely? But it's still available specifically on streaming websites and it does seem more niche as it stands.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the eSports is kind of like a hard one to kind of like guess how I know. I definitely think it's definitely on the up and coming, but there's like way too many almost like economical things going on that like kind of end up like hindering it almost in a way. But like it's definitely on the up and coming but yeah, I'll have to see.
Speaker 1:I'm intrigued to see if people get teams. That's my main thing. I'm intrigued to see if people follow teams. We had this conversation last time. We had this sort of the modularity of people lugging computers their own computers around between airports and a really big carry on, because obviously it's not something you could go oh, we're playing away. Okay, that means I need to pack all of my stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that was actually interesting because I watched the video like as you today, because it was like the. So when, like an event actually happens, there's a certain like responsibility that's taken by the developers or the planners of the actual game, and now it's becoming like more and more for them to like pay for like their travel, for example, for the actual players to come, rather than, like when all of these sports kind of started, it was obviously all on your own back kind of deal. You know like they would survive by the venue and potentially the equipment or like the like the base computer I guess, but like the teams had to like fly to wherever they need to fly to and bring their own like all sorts and stuff. So that's so yeah.
Speaker 1:It is painful, isn't it as well, the moment you move to a new computer. I think we've all had it with, especially if you're a computer user and you turn up at work and they go. You're using a Mac and you go. Okay, the keyboard is just doing random things. Now I don't know. I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it must be so weird to kind of do that because, like I'm not, obviously not been to a land before, but going from like your home setup to somewhere else, especially in a setting where you have to try and perform your best, it's like it must be so foreign.
Speaker 1:But yeah, because there is a massive thing about that in terms of in terms of performing, because you're meant to perform to your best in literally a position which is out of your comfort zone. So you're actually just saying to it you can. It's like sort of picking up I've run a, I'm putting them on new terrain. It's something you've trained for, train for, train for, and then it'd be thrown into someone new. Exactly, yeah, but in terms of, it's always great to have people because you play, you got me into one thing actually I'll forever be indebted to you for is getting into our cane. Forever indebted because it's never became one of my favorite series ever and you get you badgering honor at me to say I think you should watch it, I think you should watch it, I think you should watch it. And I was all going out. Fine, I'll get around to it. And I watched it and I could not stop and I mentioned on this podcast before, but he's a Fabulous series and I knew nothing about League of Legends at all.
Speaker 2:Hmm, yeah, they um, there's. The second season is very much in production. I can't really release anything else about it. So that's you know. It took them like five years to make the first one. Oh, really did it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they took this week time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but because they're doing like things where they have there's like an underlying law for the actual game maybe League of Legends and what they did was they actually Took the whole law, but then they bent it a little bit and then they now now they've made posts recently where, like, I haven't actually been completely up to date, so I might be off on this, but they let that she like.
Speaker 1:Changed. Like a lot of taking is a solid source.
Speaker 2:I'll be put to the slaughter for this one but, um, yeah, this is actually like changed, like the canon law here in there. Yeah, be just because of I don't mean me not just because of our game that like to help figure it all out. So it's really cool.
Speaker 1:No, is that he's got. I like the way that and that's the way that's got to happen. Actually, you can't do direct adaptations them I another one of my favorite ones is Castlevania, and you very rarely, I mean maybe the last of us kind of works, but apart from that, you can't. Hmm, you can't do things directly. You have to tweak them because otherwise you're trying to put a square peg in round hole, anyway. Anyway, we've been, we've been rambling on about this because I Subjects like interest me, interest me greatly, and we haven't actually said what the podcast is.
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna go to the pond. This is the hypothetical gaming podcast, the gaming land away. We will blend together a randomly selected group of genres and mechanics to Hypothetically come up with a idea for a new game, and then we'll even throw a narrative on at the end just for fun. Now what's gonna happen is I have a magical list in front of me that garrif will pick a random number from. He's never seen this, never seen this list before. He's not researched it at all. I still haven't put in the steam tags I spoke around in last week's podcast because they were 400 of them and I could not be bothered to do all that, but we have it and we have. You will pick one genre, two mechanics, maybe three, if I feel like that. It's just too easy because we want to make it a challenge. So, garrif, quick question before you jump in what do you not want?
Speaker 2:in.
Speaker 1:What in a genre in a genre, in a genre of a cat. You know genre on account. Is there anything that is particularly alien to you? Now? We had Pete on last week, who he's? He's been out every time he's been on. He said please don't give me sports.
Speaker 2:Hmm, actually I don't know what is it. Could you pick like three random ones, and I'll just pick one from them.
Speaker 1:Well, pick one you don't like from them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I Mean you. You could have a shooter, I suppose, or you could have a party game where you could have multiplayer. I know, for example, I know, for example, you're good at the sort of multiplayer elements that would. That would fit you. What like you love.
Speaker 2:Is there any dating sims on it?
Speaker 1:You know what there's not?
Speaker 2:but there is now.
Speaker 1:We're gonna add dating sim in. There we go, scott, I'm so sorry if you come back and dating, so you get dating sim anyway. So we are gonna crack on and, garry, for you are gonna pick between one and 22, 14, 14, cool. Now, do you want to know what that is now? Or do you want me to reveal all of the information at once? Just do all the ones I guess, and it's my one, okay. So then could you pick two numbers between 1 and 39 2, 20, 2 and 20 2 and 20.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna make you move away from 2 just because we've had that recently 10 10 and 20.
Speaker 1:10 and 20 and one more gonna make you pick one more. Now 15 To be turning 15. Okay, slightly odd. So Now, just just just just because we want to have an eye into this Process. This is an odd feeling, isn't it, to know that you just could. You're gonna be unleashed. I'm gonna unleash all of this stuff that you're gonna have to follow for the next 20 minutes or so. Yeah, it's gonna be.
Speaker 1:So what you have? You have a genre which is a platformer. So fairly simple, standard, mario Rayman, many things where you can just jump around. That's. That's fairly, fairly straightforward.
Speaker 1:Now you've got your three mechanics, which are an interesting group for a platformer. You have to start off a dark souls bonfires. Now, for those who don't know it, essentially that is a check pointing system or something along those lines, which Resets the world, is the, it causes the enemies come back to life, or or something along those lines. So it's, it's a resetting mechanic. The next mechanic you have is base building. That can be Whatever. That can be putting things together. That'd be like fortnight in terms of building something, or or in terms of Maybe something, maybe more full-on, like the Sims, where you're fully just building a house could be something like that. And then the final one, which I made you pick, which is a slightly, again, slightly bizarre one, is Ubisoft's infamous watchtower mechanics. By that I'm referring to things that if you climb up or they reveal more of the world, so the red, that that exposes more the map, or exposes more of the All, a general, general visibility of everything. I can hear you clicking a pen away, so I know that you're, I know.
Speaker 2:You're.
Speaker 1:I know you're thinking so it's quite a. There's nothing there that I'd say, oh my god, that is horrible on a platformer. I don't think they've been done before. I don't know what you think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely feels like something unique, like the different kind of elements. He's not like you can pick a game that you know exists, that encompasses all of these things.
Speaker 1:I know that when Dark Souls kind of ballooned and everybody started playing at left, right and center and then Elden Ring came in the world when I like this and I know that there were lots of 2D Dark Souls clones, that use would have used platform elements because that's that suits 2D down to the ground. But base building in a, in a, in a game which is designed around exploration and that's that's trickier.
Speaker 2:There is. Ironically, actually there's one game that I don't think it would be. It would technically be a platform that you could swear to be platform, but have you ever heard of Terraria? I've heard of Terraria, I've not played it. So Terraria is basically, imagine, my gay. I might get actually some stick for this, but it's like a side scrolling 2D Minecraft. So it's like this kind of system where you go out and you forage stuff and you do the whole mining, mining and then you do the whole crafty, crafty and you move weapons and there's many buses and stuff and the game changes and the idea that it is very much 2D and it has a lot of like very, very platformy style of and then that would also and it also has that like you create and craft blocks and you can place and all sorts of things. So it definitely has that like base building cell. So that kind of seems like that's the closest thing I can think of to like, try and get like some sort of structure to try and build into this sort of thing.
Speaker 1:So I think what you've got to do is you almost got to use the platform to link things together. You've almost got to use the watch tower elements and link that to the platform, because that platforming is naturally suited to climbing and to going up. So you build that into what are the watch tower elements, because you are naturally getting higher. So what you reveal at the top I don't know, maybe the bonfires are at the top, maybe that's how you link that together. Well, you could be very nice, easy way. Yeah, you could be setting off beacons. I suppose that's one way of doing it and you'd vis-by-how does. Why does that reset the world? Why does that? Well, why do you need to craft the bed? Oh, here's a thought you could be building the towers.
Speaker 1:That's true, and you? This is an interesting way that you could be building your own platformer, because you build the tower that you then have to climb to set off the bonfire.
Speaker 2:Hmm, True, I think I just had another terrible. Well, it's not terrible, but it's very, very similar. It could always be. Have you had a jump king?
Speaker 1:I haven't always. Is that the it's?
Speaker 2:the very rage inducing, furiating like a platformer jumping up to the top of the tower.
Speaker 1:It's not my doodle bug, or so, whatever it was, was it a doodle bug that just used to boing its way and it just constantly bounced and if you had to tilt it you didn't get the right place? Or have I overly simplified that?
Speaker 2:It's. I think you might have over simplified it, but it's like one of the rage inducing games, like similar to what's it called getting over it with Ben and Foddy.
Speaker 1:Oh, getting over it. What's his name? Ben and Foddy.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Because, he's building another game isn't it when you walk? It's coming out for PlayStation. It's literally it's called first steps or something like that and you literally walk around and well, it's that rage inducing thing. I think it's an overgrown man baby transported into like a world and you have to walk and because he's a man baby, he's learning how to walk. So every step has its own mechanics, which I can't work. I mean, it's one of those things you kind of respect from afar and go well done you, well done, you've made a thing, but I don't want to go anywhere near it. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2:Yep, I'll watch someone else rage on that one.
Speaker 1:Yes, someone else can. Someone else can be grumpy about that one, and I'll leave you to it, so, but I think that's it. Going back to Warren. Oh, sorry, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, so the watch tower element is like very much kind of falls within that like almost exploration or exploration area that would side of things Exploratory.
Speaker 2:That's the one Now close enough Side of things. So I definitely I think you could do the part where you end up having to, you're in potentially more of like a kind of sandbox survival landscape and you have to kind of kind of I'm going to be too close to Minecraft here, but and you have to gather supplies and then build the tower to then platform, and then it's kind of that becomes the bonfire, as you're saying, like a save point, but then it also like reveals a next area to maybe do it all again, because that would be more of like a game payload.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so building into like a narrative stage, what you could do is, you know, the Silent Hill games, the horror games yeah. Yeah, yeah, you know that they have that infamous, they have the infamous fog, yeah, and then you have the fog built in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what you could do is you could do this thing where you say, that is, you build your tower and you light the fire. The fire burns away the fog and then the higher you climb have, the high you can get with your tower, the more fog you burn away, but then obviously you have that element of chance that your tower might fall down. So it's a sort of risk and reward strategy where you go. I can reveal more of them at the. However, I don't think I've got the materials to go any further. Maybe I should just unleash the bonfire now and then clear as much as I can, then maybe make the current one taller or move on to building a new one. So you have this sort of risk and reward strategy.
Speaker 2:How limiting do we want to go here, like because I just thought about like there's plenty of other like kind of like almost genres or game kind of what do you call the second category like you could go into like almost like a rogue like version of that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because would you see how far you go in life? Sorry, not in life, don't have for you. Go in life how far you get, how far you get in that town.
Speaker 2:And then, because that would that idea of like it being that kind of like ominous fog whale or in the distance, where, like you can see how far you can get up, but it's like the higher you get, the more unstable it becomes, and not, and then you could like fall down.
Speaker 1:Is there an end goal or is it just general? Is it general? You're doing this loop forever and ever and ever.
Speaker 2:That's true. I'm trying to think of this thought and now I'm really struggling. But there was a movie that I'm just going to have to just throw out there and see if you remember it, but it was a cut-roasted star in it. But I think it was this train that went like through the core of the earth from like one.
Speaker 1:That's total recall, I think. Oh yeah, total recall where they have the elevator that goes through the middle of the earth. I think.
Speaker 2:I don't know why, but for some reason I thought, when you start talking about like that, I thought about potentially, what if we actually completely inverted the tower and started going down instead?
Speaker 1:No, no, it does work, because we have done that before, because we did a game about mining previously, where there was a world underneath our world and the idea was the Ubisoft Towers. You dug underneath your to the crust and like revealed each time you land in a different area, land in a different world. So are you just saying you try and go straight through it?
Speaker 2:The reason why I wanted to think of that in the first place was because I like the idea of putting the bonfires at the top, the inverted covers top of the towers now, if it went down, and the idea of it being like a checkpoint, and I was wondering how to make it a checkpoint that you could actually work from and if you went down instead of up, you could make it so that when you get to the top, I'm just going to call it bottom now Of the watch tower and get that bonfire you like, unlock new area, like around yourself, because it's going down, and then you could find a new place that way and then go down because I might, my thought, maybe it's up to you.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's up to you where you put the bonfire. You can find an area, like if you're carving down through the ground and you reach a big cavern. You can go this looks good, I'm going to put a bonfire here, and that can be your checkpoint and that can be your setting the earth, and then you can gather materials to continue your descent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I don't know, I was thinking, like with the like, that when you make that checkpoint, you could like reveal more of the kind of area where you stopped, like it's almost like you could.
Speaker 1:you could very simply do light. What you could do is you have the bonfire obviously don't have to be bonfire and then you take a bit of wood from it and use it as a torch and then obviously you have a burnout time on said torch. You can maybe you can find better wood or we can find better materials in these cabins, and you use that torch to explore and to go around and then and then you can sort of reveal more, get more materials from that zone, come back and rebuild it. But resting maybe resting at the bonfire destroys your torch or whatever it is, so you lose the ability to reset in a way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be very good. Dark Souls bonfire because, like every time you rested in Dark Souls, all the monsters respond. Yeah, I realized in an area where I'm struggling is I'm trying to think of how to actually make more of a narrative to the game, because I'm very much thinking about you don't have to worry about that.
Speaker 1:We won't worry about that yet because we have to do it for narrative.
Speaker 1:Oh, one thing I've realized that we're obviously, we've obviously going.
Speaker 1:What we've got to have is and this maybe pushes the road like elements even further because you've got, it's got to be a platform and if we're looking down, what you can say is you naturally have to put in the levels up yourself.
Speaker 1:If we're saying this is 2d and you put in the level, so you have the ability to jump out, essentially to clamber out, because otherwise it's not a platformer. But I like the idea of maybe you having to always return to the top or be at the surface and you then having to design your pit to make sure that it is an easy return. So maybe that's where the maybe that instead of having we can keep the literal bonfires, but maybe there's a recharge station at the top for all your equipment and materials. So when you get to a certain thing, you've got to run out and you've got to make your way back up, recharge and then head all the way down again and slowly you unlock better and better equipment and materials that can increase your like, how quickly you can dig, how much, how quickly you can get back up and as you unlock all this, then you don't have to go up so regularly every time you go up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you could unlock a certain method of going down which allows you to go down faster, like before you have to just actually scale down. But then maybe, like you, unlock a technique that allows you to get like a zip line or something you go down, so makes it a lot faster going up and down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you could almost unlock like a elevator which you, as we're discussing elevator that you, as we were discussing earlier, not as we were discussing elevator, as we were discussing earlier about the elevator, yeah, maybe you have that that builds in. That's. That would be quite a cool idea to just be like great, I've unlocked the left, I can now commit to going deeper and deeper and deeper and then you build that in. But obviously you have limitations, so lift can't take you all the way to your sewer and after that, platform elements. And I, like I do like the idea of you making your own platformers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, hmm, I think the with the tower element for sure is not like the idea of me making the platform as you make the towers for length and then when you get to the top is like when you've done nothing.
Speaker 1:But hmm, so I think that, as you said, you were struggling with narrative. I think what we're missing from the game as it's designed is the end game. Now, I feel like that's going to come with the narrative. So what I'm going to make you do is pick from a list of generic narratives. We have between one and 19.
Speaker 2:Right, I thought this is going to absolutely break everything.
Speaker 1:This is going to break the entire game, and it's done it multiple times before.
Speaker 2:Let's try 15. Oh dear.
Speaker 1:Oh no, this is a piece of interesting one go.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Forbidden love Right. This is going to be the love between one bloke and the other side of the earth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, imagine your objective is to get to the other side of the earth. Imagine.
Speaker 1:You can make it a comedy game and just have it like he's in love with someone on the other side of the world and goes the best way to get to her is dig, but I don't think that would hold up the entire narrative.
Speaker 2:I feel like this is continuing to be a cop out. But if you've in in in Jump King, the reason, pretend reason why you actually end up even going to the top of the towers, because there is something there made in called a babe and if you see him always fits the plot on that one. So we're doing off. This is a weird observation.
Speaker 1:To be honest, the first thing I thought, and I think the natural fit, is, when you have something at the top of the top of the tower that you're digging towards, I'm trying to think of there's any Slightly more complicated way you can do it To play with, to play with genre tropes, or play with, like the fact that maybe you have your, maybe, maybe have your running away. No, no, no.
Speaker 2:Well, you could try and go a completely different angle with it, which is the forbidden love part you could Trans. You could like translate the love part into something that doesn't have to be human to human. It could be something like a love of An activity or whatnot, and if it's Wow, I forget the word already forbidden. It could be something that could be almost like outlawed or like that sort of thing, and potentially the reason more reason why this could be like a baseball thing is like your group or a solo Band of something like a mercenary door whatever in this universe and you have to Try and escape from, basically, the authorities pursuing you in your act of what you're doing. This love for this craft almost Break it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can be in favor of that. What you could do is you deal in this, your objectivist to dig up this material which you sell on the, which you sell on the market. That saves crystals or gems or diamonds or whatever it is, and the deeper you get, more value it is, and the more you sell, and then you get more, you get more back. What could be quite good, though, is to really play on the forbidden love trope. I wonder if you could and we have been too heavy like play on the allegory of, like a slight addiction in the way like, and that kind of becomes quite meta as well as your, your, your coming the idea of getting stuck in these Game play, lose, because you know that, and there are plenty of games that we've played, them where you'll get to a point ago.
Speaker 1:Why am I doing this? I'm doing this, yeah, do this. I'm doing a to do be, which makes me do a better, and then I'm gonna do be again to make me do a better, and you realize you can just when you step back and you see the loop. Yeah, why you could almost have it as a bit of an allegory, like you dig deeper and you are not more. But then in the same time, out of just this need to keep trading and keep selling these gems, like physically, you could see your character to grade in a way like I don't know just like you could have like a buffer in a deep off kind of system.
Speaker 2:If you want to put it like game face, but like literally that's like almost the longer you spend underground, the more Rewards potentially you could gain from this kind of like gems or not you're trying to find. But you when you get back up you have that sort of like. If they have like a recharge system like all your potential tools or whatnot, it could take longer because you win down so long and it's that kind of like trade off maybe.
Speaker 1:But no, that actually works quite nice in what you can have is I think the narrative you have is maybe you just have these little little gem, little things thrown in. Like that's the gameplay side of the narrative, in terms of the longer you spend up, maybe the more your character can move around more optimistically and like being the sun and stuff like that, and but if they spend too long down, you see a natural Like the clothes start getting tattier and things like that. Just little things and it's not necessary. It doesn't necessarily have an end game as such, because that's the point it's meant to be like a sick little. You always have a secret ending where your guy chooses not to go down again and it's like a happy sunny day.
Speaker 2:This might be a bit too far fetch, but I feel like I'm gonna say anyway, which is a as well as that's cool. About the going down and coming up. It's almost like I'm with the kind of idea with the forbidden love or something. I don't know why it would make that, but it did in my mind.
Speaker 2:You could have a part where this is where it gets crazy, but you could go up or potential like Related to like the kind of environment that the ground is, where, like it's rich with materials or not, and there's like a choice that you can make in the game where you can Choose to go down for four materials or you can choose to go up, or you can do both, and I don't want to.
Speaker 1:Maybe, maybe, taking that, what you could do is you could have the clouds Not necessarily be something you go into for material Well, actually, no, maybe you do have that. You have that complete choice. Maybe you have an upper cliff face or maybe not. It's not the clouds, maybe there are ledges and stuff you can access so there's more freedom. Maybe it moved, but maybe there's a point where somehow you can sort of represent the way that you've eaten away at the environment around you through this sort of love of the digging in this, this sort of Know, so you can kind of desolate the landscape around you so you damage the cliff face, maybe those clouds. They become more gray and cloudy the more you dig and the longer you stay down. But if you, the longer you stay up the and without digging or anything, then maybe the nature starts to come back in. So you could really build in this sort of living world, even though you're damaging it.
Speaker 2:Hmm, yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think I think that's quite nice, although it's quite. It sounds deep. It's not actually too deep because it's kind of just a metaphor. It's a quite meta. It's a representation of just all these these eternal loot games, these survival games. We're doing a in a to do be to do a. I kind of like that in a way. It's kind of yeah, and it ties itself in a bun and it means that there is no endgame. That's just the whole point. You just keep going it could be the.
Speaker 2:It's very similar, it's basically the same point. Birds almost let you could explain it as like a corruption, as you kind of already kind of said, and Like there could be like a status on the world where you have like a potential extra aim to kind of keep the world in a certain state of corruption, where it's not too corrupt. Well, this is then what you can do you can almost do that.
Speaker 1:You can do that as capitalism. So if you dig up loads and loads and loads of this, of a certain element, you you're, the price of it goes down because you're corrupting the world in terms of filling it with your resource. So the idea is is if you take up just enough of each, or just do, just do a little bit, then you can keep everything at the right value and everything keeps ticking. But if you go and just take out all of that that sets iron or let's take out all the iron or and sell it, then iron all gets really, really did. The world naturally look, degrades, as we were talking about, but then also the price of iron or flies down, so you don't get value for it. Anyway, you get diminishing returns. So it it does that trade off of, of Destroying something in order for your own game. You've got to balance it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, going too far into something.
Speaker 1:Take to deep, take to do. That's exactly. This is the literal, this is the, this is the, the dwarves from Moria, which I've just realized would have been probably a better starting point. That's true. Yeah, we're not gonna do that because, literally, returned to Moria, the video game came out today, so that would probably be two on the nose. Oh, but anyway, I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just read a summary of what we've got so far and then, while I'm doing so, gareth, if you just have a think of a roughly a name you might want to call it. This is your chance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll give it a name.
Speaker 1:Give it a. Give it a go. No, there's no wrong answers, apart from the ones I don't like. So what we have is we have a, a platformer with, with dark cells, bonfire elements, base building, and Ubisoft watched our elements. Now what we've decided to build from there is a World where you can dig down or dig, dig around to mine materials, and as your mining materials, they're essentially your towers, because they're revealing more of the world as you descend through it, and you're picking up materials all the time From what you get below to increase your cavern or increase your little tower that you're built on, increasing so what to build on that and make it even better. And you mine materials, you take these materials up and you sell them.
Speaker 1:And the bonfire element is the fact that you to go back, to go back up Each time to refill on power, to refill on what we're feeling, anything really, any fuel or everything and every time you go up, the world kind of doesn't reset because you keep them, you keep you or you keep all everything you've built, but obviously the world to a certain extent reset, the plot being a forbidden love.
Speaker 1:So what we're gonna do is we're gonna slightly met her on the ground. What we're gonna do is we're gonna slightly met her eyes, it, and we're gonna make it feel like it's the, it's the metterness of the endless cycle, almost of addiction, of this one cycle. You keep doing it, you keep doing it, you keep doing it. The world degrades as you take materials out of the ground. Specifically, if you take a load of one material out to the ground, then the price you sell that for then changes and gets lower. So it is a comment on how you can live with something in, in doing something by by parts, not by doing it completely. So it's a bit measure in that way, and we're gonna call it garif, not we're gonna go out of gas, but we're gonna call it guys Horizon's all I don't know I.
Speaker 2:Like that hmm, I tried to make it like the horizon's, the idea of, like it, being perfectly flat and balanced, and then I'll see the whole.
Speaker 1:Balance. Someone really does it. We look, I feel like was trying to build into the horizon zero dawn horizon.
Speaker 2:I know I always backed out completely because of that.
Speaker 1:I was like hmm actually I like the idea of being balanced, like that right Horizons Hall right, because I look like the name. It's just a. Yeah, I'm sticking with it. I'm sticking with it.
Speaker 2:I can't, I couldn't do it either. It's like it's good enough and I'm trying to pick it apart, but I can't know. I like it.
Speaker 1:We're going with horizons Hall. Ladies and gentlemen, that's the runs all which will probably not be coming to a console near you anytime soon, unless people actually people get hold this podcast, in which case, please, pay us monies, yes, please. In which case, lots of money's, lots of money's, and yes, oh yeah, hang on. I'll say it again Ryzen's Hall copyright. There we go now. We're covered now, but thank you, thank you so much for listening to us and thank you so much for stepping in Garif. Have you had a lovely time?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but a lovely time. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Glad you come. I hope so. I hope you go off and continue to have a lovely time and don't get addicted to digging.
Speaker 1:That would be ideal, I'm no promises, just how in the garden, I heard there was stuff down here In a tower. They go up. This is the way to live, anyway. So this has been the gaming lender. If you enjoyed this podcast, please check out the other episodes. Please subscribe to the podcast and Listen to it with friends, family and just just anyone anyone you pass on the street and leave us a review as well, but only if you like it. If you don't like it, please don't leave review, because it'll make me cry. But in the meantime, I have been Matt and this has been Garif. Hello, and this is.
Speaker 1:Garif, you can now say goodbye. Say goodbye Garif, bye, bye, goodbye everyone and keep lending right now.