Describing The Skybox

You could pod another cast.

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, for our second bite at the Fanbruary apple on the main cast, we’re going to be talking about Valheim. Valheim is a survival game that largely captured the audience for this type of game when it released in early access with it’s Norse theming, boss laddering and robust base building mechanics. Since those halcyon days, the updates to the game have slowed down a bit and the player base has dwindled some, but it still remains one of the most popular survival games. Now, we are not the most avid survival game players. You might say that we all but never play these games. But, we gave this the old college try despite being very unfamiliar with the conventions of the genre, and for the most part managed to get by. Valheim is a game about very slow resource accretion with helpfully well defined goals, those being to build a shelter, improve your equipment, find a way to navigate to each boss, and defeat them for powerups, and then proceed down the line. It is compelling to have an extrinsic goal in a game like this, but there are also myriad decisions that place it squarely within its genre and make it lack some appeal outside that audience. We’re going to be talking about chopping down trees, mining copper, and chopping down trees.

Thank you for joining us again this week! Following our stated objective of playing games we wouldn’t normally during Fanbruary, this is squarely outside of our usual comfort zone. That said, the game has its merits and I hope we were able to identify them successfully. And if not? Why, you can let us know down in the comments or over on the discord, from whence this suggestion came! Next time, we’re taking a look at Lunacid, a King’s Field inspired title, so we hope you’ll join us then!

We are not enemies, but we are a podcast.

Welcome back to Fanbruary! For our second game of the month (don’t look at the calendar, please), we’re going to be talking about Wet, a third person shooter that iterates on the mechanical innovations of games like Prince of Persia and Max Payne, and takes its title both from a shortened version of the term “wetwork” and also people who are bad at naming things. Wet is honestly a fascinating game just in the sheer difference between its relative obscurity compared to other games from the era and the amount of effort that was clearly put into it. The mechanics are fleshed out, if not always polished, the visuals hold up pretty well for its period, the soundtrack features over a dozen guest artists and that’s not to mention the insane voice cast (and I mean that literally, we entirely forget to mention it in the episode). And yet, if you’re like anyone I’ve talked to about the game, you’ve probably never heard of it. While we may not know exactly what caused this game to fall into obscurity, we can look at it now and see what it brings to the table. We’re going to be talking about the game’s exploitation film theming and aesthetic, how the mechanics come so close to realizing their potential, and the impossibility of asking your parents for a game called Wet.

Thank you for listening to NOCLIP Pocket! We are slowly getting our wheels spinning again after taking most of January off, but Fanbruary is underway with five whole days left in the month! We like to do games we would most likely not do outside of the fan-suggested month, and while Wet fell more into the “we would have never thought about it” category more than the “we would never play that” one, we still wanted to give it a chance because of cool it looked. Was Wet a game you had played, or even heard about? Let us know down in the comments or over on Discord! We’ll be back next time to talk about Mario Hoops 3-on-3, so we hope you’ll join us then.

You did not survive the podcast, Raziel.

Welcome to Fanbruary! As we have for the last three years, this month we’re going to be looking at games suggested by members of our community and we’re starting today with Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver! This is an action/adventure Metroidvania title from 1999 and, especially considering the era in which this released, it has a lot going on. The game has full voice acting for all characters, a not insignificant world to explore and a large amount of side content for the player to stumble onto. Over the course of the game you will pick up a few traversal abilities, health and mana upgrades, spells, and an upgrade to your weapon by exploring the world. That said, this game shows its age pretty significantly and has a number of features and design decisions that maybe don’t hold up so well playing them in a modern context. Whether that be controls, enemy design or the mechanics of puzzles and combat, there is always something off about most systems that really put a hinderance on your enjoyment of the game. What are these? Well, tune in to hear us discuss the exploration-focused world that the game presents, the different things the game tries in the Metroidvania genre, and to hear us say what every 90s kid would about water levels and swimming.

Thank you for joining us again this week! We got a lot of great suggestions from you all for this month and it has been genuinely hard to narrow down which games best meet our criteria for great Fanbruary titles, and Soul Reaver felt like a good pick to start us off because it’s fairly well-known, but not one we would likely go back to had it not been suggested. After playing it, it’s fair to say that we understand why the series has the reputation it does, though it’s also a pretty powerful reminder of the effect nostalgia can have on our perception of something. Were we too harsh on the game? Are you a long time fan who is upset we only played this game and skipped Blood Omen? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we’re going to be talking about Valheim, which will be our first episode on a survival game, so we hope you’ll join us then!

A podcast inside a podcast inside a podcast…

Welcome back to the podcast! For our January episode, which we kind of did so you didn’t forget we exist before Fanbruary begins, we’re going to be talking about Cocoon. Cocoon is a puzzle game developed by Geometric Interactive, a studio formed by members of the developer Playdead, and while this game is something else entirely than Limbo or Inside, the style they bring is definitely present. Cocoon is not a horror game, yet it creates a sense of eerie foreboding all while being saturated with color and without the threat of death to the player hanging over their head. It’s an intriguing world to exist in, and that’s not even getting into the actual puzzle mechanics. These involve ducking in and out of different playable areas which you can physically carry with you and eventually imbue you with additional abilities. It’s almost hard to explain in a way that impresses upon you what makes it interesting, but it’s a great set of mechanics to center the puzzles on, which get progressively more complicated in the ways you might expect and in some ways that you definitely won’t. It’s a very satisfying, but not overly difficult experience and one that is well worth giving a shot. We’re going to be talking about the puzzles that really had an effect on us and the way we see the game, how the sound and visuals work together to create an incredible atmosphere, and we use the word Kafkaesque in what seems like a safe scenario but probably still use it wrong.

Thank you for joining us! Cocoon was a game that we were both excited for given its pedigree and one that feels thematically appropriate as the first of a new year. What was your experience with Cocoon? Did you find the puzzles as satisfying as we did? Were you able to create a more satisfying interpretation of the themes? Let us know in the comments, or over on our Discord! Next time, we’re heading into Fanbruary, the month where you the listener chooses what games we play. We’ve gotten some great suggestions so far, but it’s still open for the next couple weeks if you want to give us any further games to consider. Our first full episode is going to be on The Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, so we hope you’ll join us for that!

The awards show least likely to be compared to Dark Souls

What a year it has been! We played some comical old PC games, overrepresented horror, had some unnecessary and frankly inscrutable themed months and most of the good games we played came as suggestions from you guys. Okay, so maybe it was exactly the same as every other year, but it’s all about the content variety, really. This year had a good amount of that, at least. And of course, as has been said for untold past millennia, variety in games played means excellent choices for the NOCLIP Awards. Today, we’re bringing back some old favorites as well as new categories. From Best Soundtrack and Smashiest Balls to Coolest Ancient Artefact and the Another Man’s Treasure award (in which we find the most worthless collectibles), we’re recapping the truly standout moments of the year and reflecting upon the games we played and talked about. We hope you can use this opportunity to join us in celebration, or at least get drunk and yell at our bad decisions.

Thank you for listening this week, and for your continued support over the last year! Contrary to the joke in the beginning of this description, things have changed a decent amount for us. We crossed 100 YouTube subscribers this year, which is funny, but still a milestone. The podcast is also being recorded mostly fully remote at this point, which was a learning curve (that we’re still climbing, so thank you for bearing with us). All that in addition to the usual time spent and decision making we do to try to make the show as entertaining as possible means that we put forth some effort to make this thing. That said, we as always had a great amount of fun even with the worst games we played, and continue to love doing it. Thank you to everyone who listens and we hope we continue to be, at minimum, satisfactory in 2024.

This early in the game, I doubt you have the podcast to back that up.

Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket, and the final episode of the year! We decided to try to do holiday themes this year and based on our success rate, I doubt we’ll go for it again. Cthulhu Saves Christmas is a novelty follow up to another comedy RPG by this developer, Cthulhu Saves the World, but this time it is obviously themed around Christmas. The game is a throwback RPG with turn-based combat and (kind of) random encounters, where you lead Cthulhu and a party of festive followers around locations from different Christmas mythologies to defeat an evil league of ne’er-do-wells. On top of that, the combat has numerous systems, including a character specific mechanic involving building and spending chicken power as well as shifting the moves available to you based on your use of yet another recharge system. If that all seems like a lot for an indie game as short as this one is, well, you’d be right. There are a lot of good ideas present here, but it lacks the focus that’s necessary to really bring it all together into a game that is both novel and fun. That being said, if the game’s particular brand of humor speaks to you and you can appreciate the presentation, with a particular highlight on the music, this could still be worth the pretty low asking price.

Thank you for joining us again this week and this year for NOCLIP Pocket! We hope your holidays are going well (or at least better than the games we chose for this month, lol). I want to spotlight the upcoming Fanbruary event we’re doing here, so if you have suggestions of games we’d like to play, let us know over on our Discord or in the comments (or an email, or wherever else you’re comfortable doing so) and we’ll put those games in the running for an episode. Check out the last two Februarys for some examples of what we chose if you’re looking for inspiration. Thank you for listening this week, and next time we post a pocket, it will be one of the games we chose, so we hope you’ll join us then!

I will podcast unfulfilled!

Happy holidays! To celebrate the season, we’re talking about a game that has at least one time on the internet been compared to Home Alone, and that game is Trapt! Trapt is a game in which you prepare and trigger traps within a 3D environment to attack and kill your enemies. Unlike what you are probably imagining, the game plays nothing like a tower defense game or even a puzzle game. It is instead the clunkiest action game you’ve ever played. As you have to trigger traps manually with most of them affecting only a single tile or a row of tiles, most of the game consists of meticulously leading the pretty manipulable AI into specific parts of the map where all of your traps are set up to trigger them all at once. But this isn’t all bad! Well, the gameplay is kind of a wash, but there is more to the game than that: the narrative and character work are also really bad! But in this case it is a major boon for the game, because if there is a reason to play it, it’s likely for this absolute camp. Every enemy you kill has a backstory and unique entry and death dialogue, with some levels having up to ten enemies, and each stage begins and ends (at least) with a cutscene. There is a lot of story content to enjoy, and while the plot itself is pretty basic, and character’s motivations seem very easily swayed, the melodrama of it all is very worth it. We’re going to be talking about how the game itself plays and what we expected from it, the dialogue we found especially hilarious, and we defend our choice to make this a holiday episode.

Thank you for listening to the podcast this week! We talk a bit of trash on this one, but the game is still doing something unique (even though it’s the fourth in a series, technically) and deserves some flowers for that. We didn’t have a bad time or anything, it’s just a fairly basic execution of the concept. Have you played other games in the “Deception” series? Is the first one you’ve even heard of? Let us know over in our Discord or in the comment section! Next time, we’re going to be rolling out the green carpet for the NOCLIP Awards, so get your bingo cards ready and start making predictions! We hope you’ve had a good year and we’ll see you in 2024 for more episodes!

My intentions are podcast.

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about The Fall. Despite being almost ten years old, I’d consider this to be part of the new wave of adventure games, ones that seek to capture some of the elements of the classic games but without the more obtuse elements. The Fall mostly manages this, using a 2D sidescrolling style which limits the amount of screen searching and navigation you have to do to find all the pieces to each of the puzzles. It’s not without its stumbling points, but for the most part the puzzles are well designed and placed very smoothly into the difficulty curve. Slightly more questionably, it also includes combat mechanics and some exceedingly light platforming, but the mechanic set is well rounded and it’s easy to overlook some of the less polished aspects. The kicker, though, is that what you didn’t know you were actually here for is the narrative. The game is shockingly well written, both for the genre and medium as well as the time period, doing a great job of communicating its themes without dumbing them down for the player to understand. It’s a sci-fi narrative focused around AI that feels very focused, and honestly ahead of its time, and it’s well worth playing just for the story alone. We’re going to be talking about the more misguided elements of the puzzles and mechanic systems, how impressed we are that we cared about the characters at all, and ways to improve coffee…puzzles.

Thank you for joining us again this week! This is a game that had made it onto the Mystery May list for how long we’ve known about it, but having now played it, it’s surprising how little it shows its age. Certainly in some mechanical ways it feels old, but we were impressed by its maturity. Let us know what you thought in the comments section or over on our Discord! Next time, we’re doing what may be our first ever Christmas special, and talking about Cthulhu Saves Christmas, so we hope you’re in the spirit for it then.

I’ve got some oomph in my bloom.

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re talking about Super Mario Bros. Wonder, a new 2D Mario platformer, which in a weird way kind of feels like part of a trend of Nintendo making more nostalgic releases, like Pikmin or Metroid Dread and remaking Link’s Awakening and Mario RPG. Mario Wonder is a classic 2D Mario game like we haven’t seen since the New Super Mario Bros. games, but unlike those games, Wonder has a direct goal of making more innovations and changing the basic gameplay of Mario. This is a AAA video game, though, so don’t expect something so radically different and risky, but with a more whimsical aesthetic and a surprising mechanical section in each level, it certainly feels much different than past games. And this is definitely a good thing, Wonder lives up to its name by giving you something new to discover in each course and encourages you to explore to ensure you see as much of it as you can. In addition, the game contains new powerups, a badge system that can change your moveset and the layouts of the world as well. All this to say, this game isn’t the next best thing in the history of platformers or even just Mario. It is refreshing, and fun, and well designed and it looks and sounds very pretty, but it isn’t going to stress your abilities, it isn’t jam-packed with content and much of the gameplay is straight out of previous titles in the series. This makes up the bulk of our conversation: in a very mechanically driven genre, is what Mario Wonder provides different enough to be recommended despite the polish that comes with being a first party Nintendo title, is it too different, with differences in kind appearing partway through every single level while not giving the base platforming room to shine? We’ll discuss this and also be talking about the importance of collectibles and how they influence you as you play, the difficulty management present in the badge and character systems, and we take a hard stance on how Toads are treated in the Mario canon.

Thank you for listening again this week! As one of the more anticipated Nintendo releases this year, we were excited to get into it and it is interesting to see how it compared to each of our expectations. Or maybe it was very boring to see and I’m just trying to drum up excitement to try to convince you to listen to our podcast, who’s to say? Either way, what did you think of Mario Wonder? Are we just extremely old and have been playing platformers for too long, or was this game easier than you would have expected? Let us know in the comments or over in our Discord! We are getting into the holiday season and so next time, we’re going to be getting into the spirit by talking about that classic Christmastime game: Trapt on the PS2. We hope you’ll join us then, if only to figure out how that makes sense.

The podcast is watching.

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Rollerdrome, a game that mixes the extreme sports of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater with the extreme crime of gun violence. In Rollerdrome, you are tasked with eliminating all the enemies that spawn in waves within a level while performing tricks to reload your guns, and doing so quickly to maintain combos and end up with a high score. Maybe the concept doesn’t sound simple at first, because it isn’t, but even so the game is still much harder than you might expect at the outset. The game’s short length means that compared to the amount of time you have to practice for it, the challenge ramps up quickly, with levels in the first round of the game being able to kill you repeatedly if you aren’t careful, and probably still a few times even if you are. Is the game worth learning well enough to push through these difficult stages? I’d say yes. The act of getting better at this game is incredibly satisfying because the mechanics all play so well into each other. Your weapons all serve very distinct purposes and each contain different mechanics to get used to, like timing or charge-up mechanics, but all feed off of the same ammo pool, meaning that managing your resources by sprinkling tricks in wherever possible is a major part of keeping combos up and even just surviving. This means that when it clicks, your runs look very fluid, improvisational, but controlled. We’re going to be talking about, yes, the difficulty and how we each felt it handled it, the game’s light narrative, and we discuss the pros and even better pros of being able to skate on a huge monster’s ass.

Thank you for joining us again this week! Rollerdrome is one of the rare video game ass video games done for Pocket, and one that didn’t really take me by surprise. But just because I got exactly what I expected from it doesn’t mean it isn’t great. Did you feel that Rollerdrome was a satisfying challenge, or are we babies? Let us know in the comments, or over on our Discord! Next time we’re going to be talking about The Fall, which is an ancient (by today’s standards) indie adventure game, so we hope you’ll join us then.