A Hairy Rhythm Game - Nit Time

In this episode of the Gaming Blender podcast, hosts Scott and Matthew discuss Matthew's tech troubles with his new PC, the recent release of the new Dragon Age game, the issue of review bombing in gaming, and engage in a fun hypothetical game creation challenge involving a rhythm game mechanic. In this episode, Scott and Matthew explore a whimsical concept for a video game where players navigate the body of Scott as a nit. The conversation delves into game mechanics involving random number generators, rhythm-based gameplay, and the narrative of ascension and descension. The duo creatively brainstorms ideas for the game's structure, challenges, and potential names, culminating in the title 'Nit Time.'

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Transcript

0:01

I know. Hello, hello and welcome back to the Gaming Blender podcast. The podcast of Hypothetical Video Games. am Scott, hosting today and I'm here with my partner in crime, Matt. Matt, how are you? I'm very well, thank you. It's lovely to be here in my own podcast. You're back in normal light now. Listeners, a minute ago Matthew was bathed in purple light. He's now switched his light back to normal. Matthew, would you like to explain to the listeners what's going on in the room you're currently in? got an Alexa bulb. Well, actually, there's two there's two faults here. I've got an Alexa bulb, which is a which is wildly entertaining because I've always wanted to have sort of like fun lighting in my gaming room. So as we speak right now, I'm going si and Scott, si. Yes, yes, yes. Listen, you won't be able to see this, but Matthew is bathing himself in a variety of different lights for reasons that I'm not quite sure about. Care to elaborate as to why? what I do, I do get the fact that I buy too much tech. Like I just genuinely have too much tech. However, it's quite entertaining, but there is a certain elephant in the room when it comes to lighting, isn't there? Because you can see it flashing across my screen. There it is. Do you want to explain it? Because you're looking at it. So again listeners, won't see this but along with the cyan lighting that he has illuminated himself in, the lower half of him is in fact flashing in rainbow colours. He looks like the Pride Parade at the bottom which is all very wonderful but Matthew would you like to explain why you look like the Pride Parade? So my PC needed, as you may have listened to a couple of episodes ago, I described how my PC had been rebuilt and I built my PC. My friend at work, Mark, big shout out to Mark, who's actually built my PC for me. One of the things he did as a parting gift was he set the RGB lighting on rainbow and changing every 0.5 seconds. So he then said that this is my duty. to work out how to change it myself, because he built the entire PC for me, so it is technically up to me to fix it. And to be honest, I've had the PC for under half an hour and it's just flashing at me. This is going to be like this for a long time until I work out what he's done. I don't know about you listeners but I like the cut of Mark's jib. has pulled an absolute blinder here. I will let you know listeners when Matthew eventually figures this out because I guarantee it will be several episodes time until he finally gets his problem solved. By which time, every time he turns on his computer he will be bathed in the pride colours. Which is all very wonderful but it is going to get quite annoying after a while. it will get worse as well. Knowing me is one of these things where I will 100 % make it like how I want it, which makes it a million percent worse. So just for full clarity, the reason why my PC was out of action for essentially a week was because it blew up when trying to update Windows 11. It essentially went to Windows 11 and went, no. So if you're out there and try and update to Windows 11, for the love of God, wait. Apparently there is an update out there that kills your PC. And it completely bricked my unit. And Mark had to resuscitate it back to life. In resuscitating it back to life, he essentially turned it into some sort of, as you said, a member of Pride parade. There's so many colours all of the time. I mean, it looks fabulous, but only if you're in the room for a short amount of time. My wife loves it. I yeah, I mean, if I was a computer nerd and I had to build someone's PC for them and they kept breaking and they kept saying, please come and fix, I would do exactly the same thing because it will teach you how to do all this stuff. I think you are. mutter, mutter, but mutt, but a mere Smith step in the passage of time, we were always meant to take it in so you could put in the hard drives. However, it just so happens to break itself in the week before it was nothing that I had done. Definitely nothing to do with everything I downloaded. Definitely nothing to do with that. You don't believe me at all. You're making those noises, you're making noises. no, I'm making the uhum noises, which is probably the same that listeners are doing, and listeners I'm sure you agree with me. I don't believe him, it is in fact all his fault. But anyway, this is in fact a hypothetical gaming podcast. But, Matthew, other than being bathed in rainbow light, what has your gaming couple of weeks been? nothing. The PC broke. don't I don't know how to accelerate the PC broke what you've done there You've seen a wound and you've rubbed salt in it. You've gone. How was your week been? Now your PC gaming PC's been out of action. Have you done any gaming? So I've gone no why then earth would you ask that? That's essentially what you what you've what you've done. There is gone. Okay, you broke both your legs. Have you gone running recently? I did, did do that, didn't I? But there we are. There we are. In, in, okay, how's your gaming week been? How's your gaming week been? It's irrelevant. I actually have had a couple of weeks where I haven't been able to game at all because I've gone back to work and it's been incredibly busy. But gaming news most recently was, well, most important for me was that the new Dragon Age game came out I believe yesterday. I haven't played it yet but I'm going away for work for a few weeks. Once I come back I will then... dive into it. What's annoying me about it is the concerns that people have, the valid concerns people have, are about the fact that they're sort drifting away from the of dark fantasy that sort of Dragon Age Origins was and Dragon Age 2 was and it's become a little bit, people say it's a little bit Disney Pixar and a little bit more yeah a little bit more comical which which I don't mind too much but there a people who would have preferred to stay in the dark fantasy setting which I get. I think Dragon Age Origins was the story of Dragon Age Origins like very much. The thing is, I think a lot of people enjoyed it. I personally in the very small camp of people that prefer Dragon Age 2 because I just found it a little bit more linear and easier to digest. However, I fully understand that Dragon Age 1 is the better story and sort of the more epic scope. And I think that did hit home with people a lot better. I think what they've done, and I've liked all of them, I think what they've done is they've tried to scale back from Inquisition because Inquisition was, there was too much going on in the open world. They've scaled that bit down and they've improved on the Inquisition combat. And I think that what's upsetting me, and I'm not one to jump on political soapboxes, but it's getting, because Bioware made the decision to make all of the characters you know pansexual basically they don't care if you're you're whatever you are a lot of people who are obviously anti-trans or whatever have sort of piled on with the one star reviews which is which just annoys me because it's just like come on it's it's a game guys you know it's that really winds me up. don't understand review bombing because I feel like if you hate a game, if you go in with a game, is a, like, let's talk about, if you say that I am actively transphobic, AKA an idiot, and I go and review a game and I love 99 % of the game, but it has won that one percentage thing that just sparks that rage in me. I'm so, we should give it a three or four star review. No matter how angry I am, that doesn't make any sense to give it a one star review. No matter how angry. Yeah, obviously not transphobic, obviously not an idiot. However, on a literal fundamental level, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. Why would you review bomb? This happened when Godzilla versus Kong came out. They gave it loads of review bombing because they wanted Zack Snyder's, not Marvel, DC Universe to carry on. And that was crap anyway. think what's becoming a problem is that reviews are becoming irrelevant because there's too many opinions and most of them are kind of nonsensical. yeah, it's difficult. So I'm actually starting to veer toward, and I never thought I'd say this because I was always ignore... the gaming magazines and IGN and all that and look at what the players say, I am starting to veer towards listening to what IGN and Metacritic have to say because I... Yeah. quickly look at Metacritic, you get a really good vibe. It doesn't necessarily mean because it gets a low Metacritic score, you don't buy it. What it means is you have a quick understanding of what kind of game you're in for. So for example, if I quickly check Metacritic and it says 60 to 70 and I buy a game, I'm not going to be disappointed because I know what I'm going in for. If I buy a game at full price and I'm expecting something incredible, then I might be disappointed because it's a 60 or 70 game. It's just really good to have that. personal setup so you know what you're in for. I never thought I'd veer that way, but I find myself doing so. Anyway, we will now, after 10 minutes of comp-flow, kick off the actual part of the podcast. Matthew, how are you feeling about your chances today of getting something you can work with? You were giggling earlier and I don't think that was at my fluorescent lights. So there's been some drama. Have you even introduced what we do here? No, so for those who are new to the podcast, this is the podcast of hypothetical games, what we do every episode, we take a little randomise, we take a randomise genre, couple it with a pair of randomised mechanics, so could get something like a RPG with, let's see, random like rhythm game mechanics and spreadsheet mechanics. with a forbidden love storyline and whoever is on this week, in this case it's Matthew, has to try and make a game out of those mechanics. It's always entertaining. Sometimes we get some good ones, sometimes we're like, my god, what are we going to do? And on that front Matthew, I think this might be the latter. Are you ready for what you got this week? on. Hit me with your rhythm stick, Okay, it's funny you should mention the rhythm stick, but I will get onto that in a minute. You have for your genre, you have action adventure, very sort of basic, so think something like Uncharted, for example, excellent action adventure game, think about the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, I think it's called. That's your genre. Many things you could do with that. However... things. Narrow it down, narrow it down. your mechanics are rather interesting. Your first one is Rhythm Game. Okay, I saw that coming. If it's dating sim, I'm going to reach through my screen and strangle you. not dating sim but it is random number generator what what hang on hang on so what i've got is i've got something rhythm game which is specifically about a standardized rhythm that you can play to and a random number generator which is random god I told you it was a bit of a doozy this week. This is why I was laughing when I was rolling the dice. I thought you were laughing at my fluorescent lights. I thought you were laughing at the fact that I look like an Abba Disco, right? No, I'm now laughing at your pain. What are your initial thoughts? my initial thoughts are how quickly can I get a taxi to insert where Scott lives here and strangle him and my second thought is how do I do thought one quick quicker? Right, okay. When I rolled these numbers I thought, hmm, if this was the other way round I think I might cry. But please, please, knock my socks off. are you wearing your socks Yes. Knock them off, Matthew. ex-excellent. worry if they'd already been knocked. Right. If you are a return listener, welcome back to the terrible jokes. Matthew continue. put a sock in it anyway Yeah, so let's have an action adventure rhythm game random number generator Okay, I've got an idea. Ooh, that was quick, keep going. I've got an idea for two of them. It's the random number generator I'm struggling with, but I think I'll work it out. The idea is you play a hair on Scott's head. What? You are a hair on Scott's head that detaches itself and is attempting to make a break for freedom by traversing down Scott's body. Now, have you ever played, have you seen these games? I can't remember what it's called. It's gonna really annoy me. It's like somebody's climb or whatever it is where it's a very irritating game where you essentially have to push yourself up with the rhythm. So it's very limited controls, but what you do is you have to react to the rhythm that Scott moves in because if you don't bounce, which is how you move, you do the little jumps. If you don't bounce in rhythm with Scott's movements, Scott then knocks you off and that's death. Now Scott will do many things. He'll go and wash his hair, which is a big one. That's a big one to be scared off. He'll go for a run. If you go for a run, you've got to match the speed that Scott's bouncing around running. Now the aim is, is to get to Scott's socks. If you get to Scott's socks, you can jump off because you've knocked his socks off. So you're a little hair jumping all the way down. And as you traverse through Scott's various... clothing so if you go under his jumper you reach a new level and it's like a new world it's a new setting so you jump through scott's jumper then obviously down through scott's undergarments let's set about that the better and then we will just go down to the bottom but the bit i'm struggling with is the number generator what are your thoughts on that scott I mean the thing I'm struggling with is I'm trying to figure out what you've been smoking. Like what? What? What? Listeners, if you'd like to write in and enquire as to what's going on, I would love to know as well. you don't think that's quite a funny that's quite a funny idea. Do think like you're playing a hair and you're like, I want to see the wider world and your hair on Scott's head. And the thing is, we're at rhythm game, you've got to vary the rhythm. So why not have a thing where it's literally you're going through your daily routine, and someone has to time the rhythm using your daily routine to get down and each time you fail, you restart your daily routine. So it like it rewinds back into a of a time loop almost. So then you have to learn it, you have to learn okay, well, he gets in the shower now. So therefore, it's a beta boom, boom, boom. he's gonna go for his morning jogs. That's more... Because you only got one leg. Why... why, okay. Why... why a hair? Well, because I had the imagination of his little hair plucking itself out and it's sort of bendy and I can imagine it doing little jump movements. What else would you choose? Your nose. I no, could be a, you could, mean, for example. could be a knit! Well that's what was going to say, mean it could also not be me, it could also not be me because I don't have lice. But why does have to be me? I don't have lice! Okay fine, this is true. In case you haven't seen Matthew before, he has no hair. He has what I call an upside down head. Beard, no hair. You do. Okay fine, in this fantastical scenario, fine, it's me and I have lice. Go. You have, you have lice. The lice goes to its fellow lice friend. I want to see the wider world. I want to see what's out there. I need to get down, but you can't survive this fall. Therefore you must trigger the Scott's body and you must make it down. And you go through the great forest of Scott's chin. But essentially that's what you could do. You could literally have this thing descend through you and the, the, the, the, the environments are based on where you are in the body. So it does have that sort of, the bit I'm struggling with. is the random number generator. Because I do think it's quite a funny idea to get down because you can base it on different levels. Does a random number generator lead itself into... What's it called? The thing that No Man's Sky has when you go to a new place and it... Is that not technically random number generator? it is but it's less it's less front loaded a random num generator is much more sort of like if you were doing a combat and you said I'm going to do X amounts and it would say how much you won by you could argue it so what you want to procedurally generate your the inside of your thigh do you How about this? How about in this scenario, how about in this scenario I have a variety of different little creatures that live on my body, one of which is the Nits, and you play a NIT, okay? As you proceed through various parts, for some reason listeners it needs to be my body, I'm not quite sure why Matthew has this obsession with what we're going with. would like it to be your body, please write in and let us know and it can be your body. Sure, why not? how about, so random number generator, for example, Baldur's Gate 3, which uses the D &D system, that has a random number generator to sort, to do your dice rolls basically. Could you then incorporate a combat system, a very basic combat system, where you have a random number generator, when you have to, when you get to different areas where different, where other parasites live? Could you have to fight those other parasites to get through? Yeah, we could do a turn-based tactic system, say for example, if you reach the Great Crab Valley, you might have to fight. Well there you go, exactly. I'm just going to preface this by saying I have none of these things. So I just want to put that out there. You know, I'm clean. But thank you Matthew, thank you Matthew for this. I'm clean. I am clean. Okay, so you could do something like that. Or it could be... I go there. Maybe the random num germinate, maybe it's like you essentially level up and the random num generator will define how many enemies that you come into contact with in that area. Maybe at some point you think about it, nits are obviously very small, but they are still technically insects. You could be a point where in the cycle I go to bed and while I'm asleep a mosquito comes and lands on me just at the point where the nit is coming through and a mosquito to a nit is essentially a dragon. you then have... What does nit do to get around the killer mosquito dragon? for example. you could do it really whimsically and have it almost like as an adventure, but just because it's silly in nature. So maybe you have it so it's like an adventure, but the old fashioned ones where do you A, B or C? And then depending on what you choose, either random number generator kind of, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So maybe you do that because it just all plays into it. a text adventure with moving pictures for example. Did you ever play a game called The Banner Saga? The Banner Saga was like, you had a caravan and it moved, it was 2D and it moved across the screen and it moved through the environment as you were doing it and you would come up against There would be battles, would also be, what's the word, dilemmas. And you would choose and you had no idea what was going to happen and something would happen and you would just choose. So you could do, know, number generator goes into that as well because you could have, you could have a load of random events that could happen. And in the background, the game, the game basically rolls to decide what, what, what random dilemma you get. What's your idea? I have an idea which is use a random number generator to decide how long Scott's activities are for the day. So essentially, if Scott goes for a shower and he rolls a high number, it is a longer shower. Therefore defining how long that rhythm is that you need to jump at for the thing. And if you get a load like Scott's going for a run, you got low number, great. It's a quick run this time because the running rhythm I struggle with. Okay, right, okay, Scott's gonna go sit down and do some work. And he always got really high roll for this time. That means it's a long period of work. Great, that's a really easy period to traverse for because there's not much rhythm. So essentially, your routine is defined by the rhythm, sorry, by the number generator, which will then in turn find the rhythm. Okay, I quite like it. When you first, I'll be honest, when you first started talking about... No, I was bemused by that one as well, but I sort glossed over it in the middle of the pass. I'll be honest, I started quite bemused by your... this game. However, it now actually sounds quite fun. So, okay, would you like your narrative? I would love my narrative, thank you. Your narrative is ascension or descension. the... how would we put this? Your character ascending to new heights or indeed descending to great lows. I.e. ascending as an angel or descending as a devil, you could put it into that sort of context. Thoughts on that one? So say again, was the main title of it was. Ascension or descension? Hmm. knit knit knit The note that we've put in our big glossary of these things is a rise or fall from power puts a character into this platform. hmm power the rise and fall from power adds a little sort of gloss to it so i don't know whether what you do Maybe... go on, go on, go on. your knit dies, do you start again as another knit? Okay, so there like a... do you get to choose its name each time and then there's like an in memoriam of all the knits that came before that tried to find a way out? we're doing a roguelike, that's what we're doing. what we're doing is you are a knit and you are a member of a cult, a secret cult in the Knit Society, which says, and in that Knit, it's a Knit cult and it's called, the Knit cult's name is Knitting. That's what it is. It's Knitting. And what it means is refers to knitting everybody together, knitting the world together. And... what you do is the belief is from knitting that it isn't just about this little head there's more to life there's way more to life what you are doing is you are becoming Yeah, so you go down as you go down through the body, you start telling the other creatures, the ones you don't fight, you're telling them about this great other world, this great future, this great light that it isn't just here, that isn't just Scott's chest. It isn't just Scott's leg. There is more to life. And as you're telling them, they will believe you and you essentially, as you travel, have this group that travels with you, and you become the leader of this cult of the knitting. And then right at the end, you probably have a really stupid moment where you're all stood on the floor of the carpet and everyone goes, here we have survived, we have become more, where now? No, no, no, that kind of moment. So I have this imagination that you would forget to essentially lead the cult. So what you've become is like a microscopic banner saga. Is essentially what's happened to it. I see. I know, I... Yes. Okay. Okay. I'm just trying think... Has the rhythm game part of it kind of fallen away slightly? no, no, it hasn't because the rhythm game is always you still move in time with whatever you are doing. Like if Scott is washing his hair, you have to move in time with the rhythm. Otherwise you fall off and die because you're traveling vertically. So you will always have the rhythm game elements. And as per what you possibly do is I reckon you'd have two screens. have a big screen, which is what you're doing and a little screen, which is like Big Brother house-esque about Scott's day to day. I'm just sort of tracking what you do. So you're like, no, he's going to sit at his desk. That means the angle is going to change. and then you have jump to the right hand side of this thing and then you just go with the rhythm and you keep going. Scott's going for a run quick da da da da da da jump jump jump jump jump jump it's time to make progress. So you can only move in time with the rhythm or whatever you're doing. Fortunately as I'm getting older my runs are becoming much shorter so those parts of the game will be probably the easy bits. Okay. Okay. And what's the ascension, descension thing that we were... Basically they are... you become to lead the cult. You become to lead the cult of knitting. the cult of knit. culture net. So essentially as you move, you gather followers, you gather the crab people and you gather the whatever else, whatever else. The tapeworm gills begin to follow you. Excellent. We are the tapeworm guild. We stick things together with our tape. We are the tapeworm god and we want you! yeah, okay. okay. the Tate World Revolution. Are you ready for me to sum up? I'm gonna attempt to sum this up. What's happened here? Listeners, we essentially usually have back and forth. I've weirded Scott out so much he has no idea I'd do back and forth, so we just got to the stage where he's like, would you like me to just sum this up? because I've got to point where I'm not entirely sure whether I'm awake or not but it's okay because what I will do is will sum this up and then when we get to the end I'll then find out if I am in fact awake or not Matthew, be prepared for a name and it cannot be the cult of knit So, listeners, what you have there is... Right. What you have there is an action adventure game with rhythm, game mechanics and a random number generator with an ascension narrative. So, you will play as the Nits that apparently live in my head. It is going to be of roguelike, so every time your Nit dies, you will begin again as another Nit. and there will be an in memoriam for the previous knits that died. As I go about my day to day, you as the knit need to travel down my body to freedom. I know, it sounds even weirder when I say it. But you must travel in rhythm with whatever it is that I'm doing. If I'm showering there will be a specific rhythm for you to follow and it will probably be the rhythm that allows you to avoid the soap suds. If I am going for a run, you must time yourselves with my rather leisurely running style, for example. The random number generator will throw up not just random dice rolls when you get into combat with all the other beasties that apparently live on my body as you're travelling down it, you know, the people that live in the chest and the armpit and goodness knows what else, the legs, etc. It will also throw up random random sort of dilemmas for you as you you move through a bit like a bit like the the Banasaga or other sort of text adventures you you encounter the crab people they don't like you etc you must persuade them or fight them for example and then obviously there will be the dilemma will be solved using that random number generator the theme will be the ascension of the knit beyond its nitty self it will no longer be a knit it will it will break free of the hair and it will become... I don't know, a nomadic knit that doesn't need hair is essentially what we're going for. Throughout your journey you will also encounter other things that live there, the tapeworm guild and the crab people and all sorts of other people and you will be able to persuade them to come on your journey and again be free of their parasitic selves. think you should see a doctor, Well, apparently, this is all according to you, so who knows. But the name of this horrific game is going to be called... So I've got two names for you to start between. I've got the first one which is Knit Time, as in a sort of play on nighttime. We've got Knit Time. It's Knit Time. I quite like knit time. Go on, what's the next one? next one's body bonanza. body bonanza. I like them both. I quite like knit time. We're going with knit time. I like knit time. quite. So there you are. That is knit time revealing far too much about me, apparently, and coming to whichever device you use for your game. only got yourself to blame because it's blowing you it was inspired by blowing your socks off so you only got yourself I see. listeners, don't worry. Once we finish this call, I will be inquiring with Matthew about what he has been smoking to understand what it was in his head that sort of generated all of that. But actually, all seriousness, that actually sounds quite fun. Very, very... That's wacky even for us, I would say. That's one of our more left-field ones, which I'm quite glad about, to be honest, when they pop up. In the meantime... We hope you have enjoyed this podcast. Please leave us a review wherever you get your podcast. Please also comment and send us in any questions you might have or if you would like to set us challenge, please do. If you leave as a review, I will read it out on the show. I'm taking this upon my head. He will. He will. Imagine your words read out in those dulcet tones. I know, I don't know about you, but I'm already excited. But, in the meantime, I have been Scott. And I've been Scott. Yes, that sounds about right. No, no, no, it's fine, it's fine. We are also the podcasts of... Yes. Thank you. Yes, and we hope you do... dear God, man. We hope you keep... We hope you do keep on... Keep on blending. We will see you in a couple of weeks. Bye bye now. Goodbye.