Idle Thumbs

Boo! Instead of sitting down to tape a new episode, this week the recording studio is haunted by the ghosts of escape rooms past! Shang Lun and Patrick trick and treat the team to a series of sweet and spooky surprises based on our experiences of playing over 50 escape rooms together. From crunching on rock candy in Unlucky Mummy to sneaking peanut M&M’s in Classroom Murder to drinking Dutch Lady chocolate milk in Annabelle, the team will have to come together one last time escape Every Game in This City. Trapped within an escape room about escape rooms inside a podcast about escape rooms—will we ever find our way out of this mise-en-escape?

In this episode, Soren interviews game developer Adam Saltsman, who co-founded indie publisher Finji and is best known for his work on Gravity Hook, Canabalt, Hundreds, Capsule, and Overland. They discuss how Mario speed runs are the original infinite runners, why Canabalt is in 6 shades of grey, and when does Permadeath make sense for a game.

Games discussed: Canabalt, Captain Forever, Jetpack Joyride, Alone, Hundreds, Portico, Overland, 868-HACK, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2

Horror trailers and the challenges of scaring people out of their seats and into theaters are the this week's topic. We talk to trailer producer Amanda Pulver and editor Matthew Merenda about their unique challenges.

Trailers Discussed: Lights Out, It Follows, White Noise, Paranormal Activity, The Blair Witch Project, Hereditary, Antlers, The Strangers, Alien, The Evil Dead, A Quiet Place, The Conjuring, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Strangers, It Comes at Night, Mother, It: Chapter 1

If you have questions or comments please send them to [email protected].

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What if we decided to escape differently? What if we escaped without talking, without touching, or without even seeing the room? Instead of hitting the wall at Codefactory in Sunway Putra, what if we tried to scale it? This week Chad Toprak chats about game development and community building in Malaysia with our final guest, LeeYing Foo, a game artist and UX designer at Kaigan Games as well as the co-organizer of WiGout Malaysia, a hangout space for women and underrepresented folks in KL. After that we head to Codefactory at Sunway Putra before Goldie, Stephanie, Patrick, and Doug break down Classroom Murder, the high school mystery room that inspired us to start designing our own quirky constraints, traitor mechanics, and teen drama! Then the team takes turns playing the same escape room but each time with different voluntary rules: an escape room where no one could speak (except Doug, who was taking notes) and an escape room where no one could touch anything (except LeeYing, who was blindfolded)!

In this episode, Soren interviews game developer Adam Saltsman, who co-founded indie publisher Finji and is best known for his work on Gravity Hook, Canabalt, Hundreds, Capsule, and Overland. They discuss how Cave Story showed him that he could make games on his own, why he thought he worked with the guy who invented Boggle, and his many failed attempts to join the video games industry.

Games discussed: Super Mario Bros. 2, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Cave Story, Tower Blocks, Boggle, Gravity Hook, ThrustBurst

Assistant editors are essential to the trailer industry. We discuss the many things we learned on the job. What an assistant editor does, their day to day tasks, and how many varieties of tea they need to keep track of. We also discuss the trailers for 6 Underground, The Gentlemen and Free Guy.

Trailers Discussed: 6 Underground, The Gentlemen, Free Guy, 1917 Featurette, Russian Ark, They Shall Not Grow Old, Boyhood, The King's Man.

If you have questions or comments please send them to [email protected].

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Rob, Rowan, and Sean welcome Jeff Green to discuss what might be the greatest year in gaming. Looking down the release slate for that year, it was obviously stacked with brilliant games like Alpha Centauri, Freespace 2, and Jagged Alliance 2 (to name just a few). But did people know it was special at the time? And did anyone realize how fleeting that moment would prove to be, just before Microsoft entered the console wars and began to bridge the gap between console and PC?

Locked in a bathroom, trapped in a museum, handcuffed together, and wearing clown makeup, after five full days of escaping, the team finally hits a wall at the Fifthroom in MyTOWN. Patrick LeMieux tries to hold it together while introducing our second special guest, Clarissa Lee, a research fellow at Sunway University, who had the dubious pleasure of joining us for her first (and our 30th) escape room. During the interlude, we listen in on Doug and Patrick’s personal audio diaries recorded in a food court immediately after each of their teams had escaped yet another Egyptian-themed room, the Unlucky Mummy. Then we laugh, we cry, we try and read fingerprints off dirty bandages, while slowly losing a sense of what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and what escape rooms even are.

Teaser trailers are some of the most fun to edit. We discuss what we think makes an effective teaser trailer, and how they differ from full trailers which reveal more of the story. We also talk about a LOT of our favorite teasers and how they successfully tease the audience using entirely different philosophies and editing techniques. We also touch on the teasers for Tenet and Birds of Prey which the studios released exclusively in theaters, and the new Jurassic World short film which acts as a teaser trailer itself.

Trailers Discussed: Tenet, Birds of Prey, Battle at Big Rock (Jurassic World Short), Alien, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Godzilla (1998) Museum, Godzilla (1998) - Fishing, Terminator 2, Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings BTS teaser, Lord of the Rings Teaser, Cloverfield, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Resident Evil: Extinction, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Monsters Inc., Monsters Inc Charades, The Incredibles, Battleship, Inception, Layer Cake, Back to the Future, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Battle: Los Angeles, Toys, Transformers, The Addams Family, Where the Wild Things Are, The Exorcist, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Rebel Assault II, Dead Island.

If you have questions or comments please send them to [email protected].

Join us in the Idle Forums to discuss this week's episode!

Rob, TJ, Ian Boudreau, and US Gamer editor Mike Williams discuss the very pleasant surprise that is Age of Wonders: Planetfall. From initial skepticism over the fantasy series' pivot to science fiction, the gang are slowly won over by Planetfall's novel solutions to expansion and city management, diplomacy with minor factions, and glorious tactical combat.