Personal Connections to Nintendo

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Whatever your budget is, with savings on seasonal plants starting at five dollars. With the grill fired up and your backyard set to perfection, you'll be able to invite friends and family over to kick off the party Start celebrating with low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. Prices may vary by storic exes a pricey Home Depot com sl priceatch for details You've switched your Nintendo voice chat for the week of may twenty seventh, twenty twenty six. I'm your host, Logan Plant. We got an amazing show in store. I'm with Brian Alono, Hey, Brian Hey, how are you? I'm doing great because we have two very special guests from Yacht Club games who just released or releasing this week. Mina the Hoower, it's not out yet, but our review is up today. It got a ten out of ten. so congrats guys, Sean Velasco and David Di Anl. How are you guys doing Heys pretty great. We just found out one second ago. ten hundred. So that's pretty fantastic. All But otherwise otherwise guys here. it's it's been, you know, it's a hard hard road where' we're working towards getting the game out and making sure everyone loves it. So 's been going crazy this whole this whole week, this last couple weeks, all the excitement gearing up to the release, putting everything out on social media, finally, like after all these years we're you know, finally getting to getting to show it all. So that's just really, really exciting Yeah, and we're going to talk all about Mina in this hour long interview with Sean and David on NBC. and if you haven't you haven't played the game yet, so there's not going to be big spoilers. So you can listen to the whole thing and know we're not going to talk about the big secrets of this game because there are so many secrets. Brian and I have finished the entire game and we've been texting about it for the last two weeks just about secrets we have found We are hanging our head against the wall to try and uncover It's been a blast and I think I want to start here because one of the biggest compliments that I can give Mina is that you guys made a Nintendo game. and I don't just mean like an homage. I think that there's tons of those out there, but you made an innovative game that builds on past trends in a way that feels very Nintendo. And I think one of the top examples of that is Mina's central burrowing mechanic that is essential in combat puzzles, mini games, and the entire game feels built around it in this very Nintendo way And on the stats screen, I have more jumps than steps taken because I burrowing constantly like I'm never walking around. So how do you go about coming up with dozens, if not hundreds of ways to get so much mileage out of Mina's one central mechanic Wow, I mean, that's a really big question. I mean, I think just like one step at a time or one jump at a time, I guess I mean, yeah, we I mean we We are very adamant about making every screen and every inch of the game be interesting and different in some way. You know, every NPC you interact with, we want to be interestnting and different, every you know, every every stage you're going to, we want to make sure it's different than the previous stage you went to um And I mean, I think part of doing that is taking advantage of the mechanics that we that we built into the Core Aina, right? making sure the weapon you're using engages with the enemies in interesting and different ways and making sure the burrow is, o, you haven't seen it in this way. Here's another way we could do it U ye, it's I mean, really it's just a lot of hard work. It's like there's a reason it took six years Yeah. I mean, basically every single object and enemy, we have to think about how is the burrow going to work with this? How is the jump going to work with this? How is the attack going to work with it? And if it's too if we've already done it before, it's like a it's like the magic trick, right? once you've revealed it once, then you got to you got to innovate or do something with it. So ye just as a result just because like we couldn't do we like weren't allowed to do the same thing more than once. So we like had to come up with something different with the borough every. Right. Yeah. And I mean, even when you come like in the last six months we're like when we're looking at the whole game as a whole playing through it all, you know, all twenty hours and we're going, This enemy feels really similar to that enemy We like we got to do something about we got to make some at least make some small tweaks or do something to make it. so It stands out when you're here, right? So you're not thinking, oh, I did this already. I want to I don't want to keep our guests waiting with Brian. The whole time we've been waiting for Mina The Hoower, I just I just thought this was the perfect game for you because like it is a gameboy color. It looks like Lyink's Awaken of the Oacle Games. It's got clear bloodborne ideas, Castlevania ideas Zelda ideas. and like those are your favorite things in the world. So just what was your experience like with Mina No, I mean, you guys like seriously like built in a laboratory like my dream game. And so first of all, thank you for that. But no, this is a I don't I don't think people are ready for just how shockingly deep this game is. It is like I don't I It took me twenty six hours to roll credits And it said that I had done eighty eight percent of the stuff that there was to do or find or collect. And I just it just kept feeling like you would tug on something. it would just go deeper and deeper and all these mechanics overlapping and stuff like that Was there ever wasas there ever like did this start much simpler and then just kind of spiral out of control in the best way possible? Because it feels like, you know, there's a very, there's underneath it all, you're like, yeah, it's an NEF game, right? And it's sort of is, but you've built so much on top of it. So when did when did you know like this is This has to keep going. this has to keep getting bigger U yeah, I mean, I think it wasn't, it's not necessarily that like the scope, the scope grew out of control, but more like once we had written everything down on the page Once we started to multiply out and realize everything that we had committed to, then we understood how truly large of a game that it was. Like for instance, we have these sixty trinkets and we decided that we're going to have sixty trinkets.'s like that's what're pinning on the board. And there none of them are they're all going to be like none of them are mutually exclusive, meaning that you could have any of them on at any time And so that meant that they would all have to work together and they would all have to work separately. And so justust in and of itself, like that kind of exploded the scope for it likeike if we said oh yeah maybe we'll split it up, you'll like attack Trink it itss defense drrinkets and some other kind of drinket, like by stratifying, then we could have We could have made the scope smaller, but we didn't because we had committed to all these ideas. Same thing with like being able to do any of the levels in any order or being able to yeah, just the openness of the world. That was stuff that we wanted to have from the beginning Yeah, we I mean we even started with Hey, we're gonna to make a shouffvel night sized game We said so in Shovel Night, there's, I think fourteen stages And each of them have about thirty screens of content in them So we said, okay, we'll make six or our seven levels, core levels in Mina and We'll split them into two parts, like a, you know, like Dungeon A, Dungeon B kind of thing. and each one will have thirty screens. They'll match Eonight exactly Right And then when we went to actually make the game, and we stuck to it the whole time, right? But when we're making the game, it's like, oh, and but I guess in a platformer, like you're stuck at the bottom of the screen and all the rest of the content is sky, right? And you only you can only do this much and when youound, it's like, oh, you actually have to fill the whole screen with content And you have can be able to come from the top or the bottom or the left or the right. And you have to be able to do that like, you know, first you have to go this way, then you have to come back that way and you have to go, you know, and it's just like, oh, this is actually a lot bigger than we. There's barely any sky at all in guys there's. In fact, we had we had to like be like, okay, we need to get some sky in there because you' the sky the ground too much Yeah Yeah, I definitely notice that. There's like, one screen for dungeon. you like walk outside and you're looking over this balcony and you see these gorgeous trees in the background. So that was definitely noticed. Yeah and I mean, there's a there was a component of it though that we knew like like similar to Shovel Night. likeike anyone that looked at Shovel Kight before it came out thought, oh, it's going to be like a Megaan clone or you know, you might like you pick your NES clone and you don't realize like when we take all those ideas and merge them and we add our own, you know, special sauce to it And we added like, you know, we add a little bit more story than you might expect in one of those games and a little more humor and little like these special moments over here. And when we like combine all those things, it makes it seem like way different than people expected, right Yeah think I we sort of knew we sort of knew that was happening like, you know, we were like, We're going to make this Mina Boodborne game And people aren't going to know that we looked at Final Fantasy Adventure and we looked at, you know, what's the dark Dark Busters? Dark arms beastbusters Ams beastbusters and Kremlins too for any el Srint They're not Landstalker and B Look at Molter enigma and you know, they're not Gania, of course Millania was a huge inspiration. And like so not knowing like we have just like a billion things going into this thing that make it notot quite what you expect, right Um like, you know, one of the biggest things we have to do sort of like where like in in people playing the game and when they're playtesting and trying to fix things and make things work is like, we had to like sort of convince people it's not a Zelda game Right? That was a huge part of it. Like people people would get to the water area and say, I need the flippers. So I can't I can't go to this level yet Right? They just automatically think that. And so, you know, we have to like, we basically have to like do a lot of work to show you that this is not Not a game you've played before, right We have to yeah, we have to like u teach you all of those habits. Yeah. like my my sister got the axe and used it on the bush and then she could jump across the pit and she and then she died and lost the axe and was like, well Now I can't cross the pit anymore. Like what do I do? I was like, well, you guys you could you got to hit it, you know, But but like she didn't like she didn't realize that. Everybody is like very we we called it Zelda brained. you're like Zelda brained and you think that the item is related to the is related to the world, but it's not Now I actually had a question written down exactly like that. so I love hearing you guys say that because I was totally playing it like Lyinkx Awing. because if you're listen to the audio version of the show and you haven't seen Mina the Hoower, this looks like a Game Boy cololor Zelda game, but modern. And so in the go heading to the first area to the crypt, I see this huge gap and I'm like, well don't know how to get across it, so I guess I'll come back later. And then as Mina reveals itself to you, it becomes clear that there's just as much like Breath of the Wild Tears of the Kingdom, you have the tools in your pocket now as there is Oracle of Ages and seeasons. And I think that is really cool. and why I love this game so much is there's a guy in a cave and he's like, hey, try using whatever trinkets are in your back right now. Can you do it? And then that kind of clicked with me. I'm like, oh, there's a million solutions to this. So when you guys are making a puzzle, do you one solution in mind or do you have a million in mind? Like kind of how do you balance and design around all these tools that are out there in the world? Well, we generally presume that the player is going to have no extra tools at their disposal And so they're going to, you know the player can only burrow two tiles, but not three. they can only jump one tile, but not two if they're not burrowed. So if they can't burrow under, then we can prevent people from crossing like that. You know, there' metrics basically. And yeah, I mean, all of those metrics are very cleanly adhered to. But then we start breaking the rules a little bit and saying, okay, well the, uh a trinket that lets you float and this trinket lets you get like one additional tile of space. And then we'll actually go into the level and be like, okay, well here where and open it up and be like, well, maybe we could put a three tile gap here. There's not a problem with the three tile gap because the player won't be able to cross it And then we can put the trinket here and s and it becomes a self reinforcing thing U yeah, those soft gates were put all over the game as for like for fun things and then also like as actual soft gate like, hey, there's There's a five tile gap here and If you can cross it somehow by crossing the wall or by jumping across or by floating across it or whatever, then then you could get it Um yeah, and they were all, I mean, we had them all in a big giant document that I'm sure willll be showing on at some point. Yeah. I mean, like part yeah, just to be clear for anyone who doesn't know, like there's no in the mandatory like objectives that you have to do to beat the game, you never have to use any item or anything that you pick up in the world to complete it um So with all those items, we like that you do get, we were thinking like they were basically helping you to get extra stuff in the game or they were helping you to take shortcuts through. So a lot of stuff will is just there for the purpose of making it easier or like or so you can do cool tricks to get through the stage or so you can like cross that big gap And when and when we were like coming up with the stuff that Seaan saying, we were like We were oftentimes thinking of like You know, we have sixty trinkets, you know, A few of these should be able to do this evenven though they're serving different functions or we have fourteen sidearms, a few of them should be able to do this. or like maybe you have one trinket that can do it and one sidearm that can do it. Or if you have a weapon upgrade, you could do it. Like we're trying to think through, make sure there's multiple ways to do it. But yeah, we're essentially starting with that like metrics. likeike this is a four tile gap. What can do a four tile gap you know, these things And agree I think that that's what fascinated me so much about this game is that Logan and I one of the sort of touchstones we were texting about was Tears of the Kingdom, which is a game that Um, you know, you guys announced your game before that game was even revealed I I think our brains sort of went in the same place where it's like, oh you're, it feels like I'm breaking this game when I'm playing it. When I was playing Mina, I was doing stuff where I was like, was I supposed to do that? Is that okay? And it's like, no, you guys, you guys let us do everything. You gave us this big sandbox and all these toys to play with And I passed the switch two to my kid made her sign an NDA and all obviously. And she up coming after her. I don't believe She was like, Daddy, this game's too far. And I went in the settings and it was like, oh, you can you can make it so Mina can burrow infinitely or can, you know, go twice as fast and or you know is has infinite hearts and stuff like that. And I love that you guys just like there's that whole, there's always a debate with every soul's like. like, you know, what about difficulty? would play it as the creator intended and all that. And you guys are just like, no, you know, break our game, go crazy. So what was like What was What was that like to basically say, hey, we want you to go under the hood and flip all the switches if you want to I think there was big two like big components for at least for me. One was we're like we're we came off shovel night, right? It's a very linear game of very like you're doing the same most people are having a very similar experience And when we're making Mina, we knew we like wanted to make somethingomething where like people might not see the same things, peopleople might not play it the same way. People are going to go to different places And I think and and then and the part of that was like building an RPG mechanic into it, right? So it would be You know, if you're having a hard time you're in the wrong area, you can level up, right? If you're if things are going wrong, you can get equipment. Um, and I think part of the fun of RPGs is breaking the game is is getting that one item that lets that where your your brain goes, Ohh, I could just use this and like skip this whole section. I'm a genius, right? U the revivify on the zombie to get them use I mean or just even like elemental weaknesses is like a is like a right che And and and thinking through o and there if there's so many if there's going to be so many items and so and you can go anywhere starting the game Like the thing you think about when you finish one of those games is, oh, I want to play it again and see what happens if I go to level four first, right Um So like making sure and you can't go to level four first, like if it has that kind of RPG mechanics where level four is harder than level three, we have to provide like some way of you cheating it, right? You can get the item earlier than you thought you could And I think the to your point about the modifier is essentially us, I think that's just an extension of the same idea Like we we had seal night sheet codes. we had three hundred plus of them in the game And they were fun, but you couldn't you couldn't like turn them on together or you can easily access them. You had to know them, right? You had to put them in the file when you named your character You had to like put it in the cheat in then So we thought, why don't we do that same idea and just and put in the menu and it will they'll feel like game genie sheets or they'll be weird or they'll be helpful or they'll be like, whatever. you know, you can moon jump and fly off the screen U, but it's the same idea where you're where you're taking like in an RPG, you are modifying your character and controlling how it plays to some extent, right? You can just totally under level your character and make it impossible for yourself, right Um, and we were just want we were just simimply doing that same idea in a menu Um like as like here's the easy way to get at it, right? Yeah. And it ended up just being like such a like a giant toy box full of fun and interesting things that you can mess with. And like, I mean also you don't need to go into this menu ever and mess with it at all. if that's like not your jam. U I think like that's another that's another important thing. like maintaining the important integrity of the achievements and fe systems. I mean, we got a lot, We posted about this like on Twitter or whatever, you know, on every social media, no one cared and on Twitter, it was like a billion views and because because people were, you know, sort of upset about like the dark Souls conversation, right? whichich I mean, we think is really cool. Like if you want to make your game be this fixed that is like this difficult, you know, masterpiece. That's like really cool. and it's fun as a kid play that game and like grow into being able to play it, right U, but it's also fun when I play u you know, turtles in Tye on my sest to be able to set how many credits I have in the game. Right? Yeah. I mean, I think both like all the above is cool and it's cool that people do different things There's like such a grand tradition of of cheap codes and like arcade dip switches, you know, I've been messing with like arcade RMs recently and it just like you can I was just thinking about, it's like the same thing, you know, back in nineteen eighty six, it's like all the same flips that we werere switching. R And your konami code. It's a grand tradition. Yes Yeah. I love it. Yeah, and Brian and I were just talking, we had a big meeting before this show and like we're comparing puzzles and we're talking about how we did certain things. and Brian like used the fishing rod to do ridiculous things that I would have never thought that could have done. and I solve these things a completely different way. It is just hilarious. L it is such a great water cooler game. And so I won't say how many, but eventually you can stack more of these trinkets on top of each other that we're talking about and chain these abilities together. expect to be surprised by anything thing that players discover or do you think you have a pretty good idea of how people are going to break this game and interact with it I don't know. That's feel like we we got it all, we got it all. I mean I would say I want to say no. this last one I want to say no, but I don't. I mean, we had we had a pretty good like group of playtesters, including like some very good speedrunners. U So they, I mean, they caught stuff that we weren't expecting for sure. And they're like I would change one, I would change the position of a tree and they'd be like, o, nice change with the tree R. Yes. like they really do twenty five hour game, right? It's like, o I really I really appreciate how you change the color of the grass there. And it's like, what? I didn't even know we did that. right I pay attention coming up U also said. Yeah, they found lots of stas, but yeah, people are people are obviously are very creative and you know it's hard it's hard to like expect how creative they could be. Yeah, but likeout Because of the randomizer, we had to we had to test all the items and all the areas and like with all the enemies and all the situations. And so I feel like There's like I feel like we got pretty good coverage You know, let we'll go back to this. we'll go back to this in in a few weeks. Yeah in three months. We'll see. Yeah Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times. Your to do list may feel endless with new tasks, and lists can easily begin to overrun your life So finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything as a built in business partner can be a game changer. 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Download the prriceline app or visit priceline. comot Actual prices may vary, limited time offer Yeah, I have a feeling people are going to you know, go under the hood and hit a bunch of switches and then do speedruns and live streams and all that. it looks like you guys have specifically built it for that. Um I wanted to ask you a bit about the tone in this game. becausecause without spoiling anything really, but it's it's a lot darker than I thought it would be And I really appreciated that. I mean I'm I'm a huge link to Aakening fan. and you know, that game Pretty sad towards the end. But there's some stuff here, like there's some monstrous looking pixel art and, you know, body horror stuff that happens with Ait sprites. There's some like, you know pretty not necessarily disturbing, but just stuff that happens. you're like, wow, you went there. So I guess what was the design process behind that? Like, did you always know you wanted to make something that kind of looked colorful and cheery, but under the surface was a bit more blequak and grim Yeah, I mean, they think you you nailed it on the head U we wanted to make a scary game or a spooky game that's also like family family friendly horror, we said or or funborn. Fborn. Right. like in in the vein of like a Castlevania, right? Like a Castlevania, if you look at the, you know, the monsters in the world that you're in, it's like very scary. But if you're a kid, you probably like don't sort of register at all, right Mhm U I mean, yeah,, we I mean we we were coming off of like specter of torment when we were thinking about this game a lot. just like in the initials, you know, planning. And so we like really enjoyed dipping our toe into that kind of like spooky u for kids And yeah, it was so we were thinking about like, how do we essentially like take that one step further I also want to mention like we wanted to get horror out of a like out of a pixel game out of something that's like not like that like viscerally horrific and something that could also like look cute and be horrifying. We looked at Mother three or like Mother three is one of our big favorites in racia. It's just like Yeah, it's like the best thing. But like it's just so. I mean, it's like so deeply disturbing and horrifying despite like not having that much Yeah I mean, the pixel art and Me goes further in the creepy side, I would say than mother Uh But yeah, we've had big line items, right? We want to do, well, I guess I don't want to do any spoilers either, but you could probably imagine what the high concepts were of we want to have this happen and we want to have this happen and then we basically had to like work backward to get ourselves there of like, well, how can we do this in a video game? And how could we do this in a way that's like family friendly and how could it not be too creepy? And like or how could it be like a couldould there be like a humorous slant on it? Or how could it be something that that could be interpreted in multiple ways also? So that way it's like the horror is only there if you're looking. Right. And I mean, one of the big things we were looking at is like we're looking at making like a Castnyvania or Bloodborne and they're very Victorian Fiction inspired, right And we so we spend a lot of time looking at those that like those kind of stories like you're Frankenstein, your're dor. Jelln Hyd, your Uh, your Draculas Uh even to like, uh Dickens Dickensian kind of like stories. And like what are the common themes? What are the common like like the ideas that they're like hitting their heads against like their the, you know Oh, you know, science is changing the world. What does that mean? Oh, industry is coming. What does that mean? Th kind of like, how does that affects stuff is like very much on our mind at the start and like how do we how do we like presents sort of like the same kind of fears that they had then in in a modern game and, you know, funny enough I think funny for for like how it worked out is like I mean people are like think we're in like a, you know, second golden age the same way. We're like kind of going through Victorian times again. Yeah. So this is the little hits like there It's a little hard. maybest. Yeah. Yes And I think I think something else that just adds so much to it is the just oddball characters you meet and that's something that like the Souls games do really well and Zelda games do so well. and I just love Ossx, which is the central city in Muna that you revisit kind of after every major area you complete. and it really reminded me of like clockdown from Majora's Mask and just that it has so many side quests and so many secrets and so many just bizarre characters that say crazy things. likeike there's there's a guy who won't let you into the music hall until you figure out a way in and I love the way that the screen shakes and he just shoves you to the ground and doesn't let you in. that's great And just talk to me about constructing this central location that's so important to both gameplay and Mer returns here, upgrades here, and story and that it's kind of where a lot of stuff goes down Well, yeah, I mean, clocktown is the is the gold standard for like the biggest most complex Nintendo town that I could think of anyways. I mean, we certainly looked at that a lot. We thought about we did think about Mina as like a termina with with a clocktown in the middle and a small ring of overworlds around it and then like extending levels that went out like that. and our ring became a lot larger and more dense and complex, but there was the idea was to have one big giant town that was a hub in the beginning. And so I mean, making this thing was just I mean, it was crazy because as you'll notice, it unlocks over the course of time because you don't want to be experiencing the whole thing all at one time. But theres there's so much to all do at once. It's like, how will players even approach it? We decided that we were going to have almost all of the almost all of the weapons and collectles stuff all available to you from the get go to be with like the openness of the game Um, but how do we like how long are you going to spend in there? Are you going to enter every single door? How many times are you going to crisscross back and forth? So yeah, we plan for all that you after you go after you routed through the initial part of the game, then you go into the town. and then after you finish one leg, you come back through the town and we thought about it. What's going to happen after you finish your first tower and what's going to happen after you finished your second tower set of towers. We had to make it interesting every single time. and Yeah and keep just filling it out with more and more content. Yeah. And in terms of the NPCs, I mean, we would start with like, here's functionally what we want to have happen, right this NPC needs to give you a trinket. He needs it or this NPC uh needs to you know, train you on what burrowing is or train you about a secret about burrowing or some of it some of it was thematic. someome of it Yeah, I'm just I'm just going through like how we get there some of the times. And then a lot of the and then and then, you know, some ideas are basically like kind of like fear thing do we want to hit hit on, right? Like kids are scared of, you know Big people kids are scared of getting like like, you know, the getting kicked out, getting kicked out of a tavern, right? You're getting like scared of that. And those are the kind of things we would just want to hit on. And you might not be scared of it. L all those things like might not register for you, but like they're probably going like hit on something for someone and like whether they and, you know, for us it was like We're putting these in and it is a pixel game and we're going like, is this, I don't know if this is scary or like funny. but I think it's both a lot of the nice thing is like when it is funny, it sort of like opens you up for the other thing that might be scary to you Because you're like you're more vulnerable, right? You're like, oh, hah haa, that's funny. Guards down. Yeahes. Yeah, and I mean, we just try to like overall, we're just trying to do things that like we haven't seen in other games and oftentimes that just means doing something weird And you said, I go ahead brian go for a looking I was just gonna to say like you said you start from like a function, a place of function and I love that because I think One of my favorite things about me is just the attention to detail and that I think you guys go the extra step in a lot of cases that just make things more memorable. And like one example is there's this recurring NPC who you have to race to a central fountain and he sets up these rules for you. He's like, don't cheat, no warps, nothing like that. And he's like, Please don't use stairs. And I won't tell you why he says that, but it's just hilarious. And then like you accidentally step on a staircase, he's like, nope, game over, don't do it. goo back to the start. And I will just never forget that character in those races. It could have just been a very simple racing minig game, but instead, it's one of my favorite little recurring its in the game. So I just love it. It's funny. That's like such a good it's such a good example because We started we knew we wanted to have races, right? So we put this character in. We just sort of didn't plan where he would go exactly like we built out the levels relocations one Weewocations one far. Right right, smallmall, medium far. And we knew roughly, oh, one's probably going to go over here, one's probably going to go over here, one's probably gonna to go over here. But when we built the levels we didn't really think about where that he would go Um So when we put like we' like, okay, we're going to put them, you know, in the West side of Ossex, right And we're just thinking, we need to make sure there's like a couple fun paths to get to the end And when we were looking at it, we went, Oh,, if you take the stairs If you take the stairs, it's like too easy. There's like only one path. It's too lame. How are we It's like too lame.s It's too short. But if we get take the stairs, you have to think about like how to get around, right? Right And that was the whole point of having the race was thinking about like, oh, think about this world and how to get around in interesting ways. And it just like solved this huge problem for us. And then, you know, from there, we're like, oh, let's come up with a reason why maybe you wouldn't want to take the stairs Yeah and that reason is hysterical. so much also, it's so much funnier or' so much better than having, you know, a line of flames that's stopping you from going or that or him stopping you and saying, Hey, you went off the track or whatever. It's like by having a natural barrier there just makes it a lot more natural U the music in this game unsurprisingly just completely rips.s I mean, Shovel Night was was fantastic in that department. This is even better somehow Um, I got to the snow level and my brain was like They better have some good NES inspired snow level music here. And I'm like, this is some of the best I've ever heard for a snow level. What were some of the sort of like inspirations and touchstones beh that? I know obviously like Tailes for N ES has always been one of the big ones for you guys. but what did you bring into the fld this time around U I feel like youd I feel like you'd have to go to Jake to really ask him. Yeah. I mean his brain is like an encyclopedia of music it's hard to it's hard to say. I mean, he just has' like extremely intimate and detailed knowledge of every single like game, music ever written and and like technologically how it works Right not to mention a not to mention all other music, likees you know, class R. Like his parent, his like dad plays the banjo, right? Y. And so when he's when he was writing the music for the bayo, he's like, oh, I finally get to write some like, you know what do you even call the kind of music? my best topic but like that kind of like blue that kind of blues, that kind of like, you know, Banjo blues music Tangy that you might sign there. And it's like, what like how do you even I can even like picture how you imagine that kind of m like music in a like in this eight bit style, right? Yeah. That's like one leap, but he's like But he's able to take that like music he heard growing up from his dad playing and combine that with like like, you know, decades of music that got created in on the Game Boy and other, you know, other places includluding like all those little flourishes that you just that like your brain just like latches ont to. you're like, wait a minute. I'm like this is like I like know this from something. this is like from somewhere and it's all's just like is congealed. Yeah. And then and then you know, some people might not know is that use Kashiro wrote two tracks for the game, which might be one of the the frozen train yard, by the snow level you're referring to might be one of those tracks uh, who's like u legend who wrote, you know, Streets of Rge and, you know, Castlevania stuff that we are inspired by. Dragonlayer Like every It's just like crazy. It's just the number of like franchises he's touched and made amazing are incredible. And the fact that wr he wrote two amazing tracks for the game and that Jake is able to like take those tracks and integrate them in a way that makes sense L that to the point where like we've had other reviewers asking us like who like, oh, I know, I know which ones he wrote. They're these two and you're not you're like, no, that's Jake wrote those two. L you got a test. like which ones are there That's awesome. That is completely surreal that a legend like that would collaborate with you guys on your new modern classic. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, tootally insane somethingomething I want to talk about is just this game doesn't have a detailed map. It has like a very rudimentary map that you could eventually look at But in terms of like a room to room map, it doesn't have one. And I think that this world constantly doubles back on itself with shortcuts and hidden paths. And I never felt really lost. I felt like the result instead is I know this world better than I know many others just because I was forced to learn it. If something looks like a path, it is. And so I'm just so impressed by that. And I just w to know what some of the tricks were that you used guide the player through each screen without letting them get this zoomed out view of where they were going Uh yeah, well, the Majora's mask approach that we talked about before where you have the the central hub area and then everything is like on the outskirts. thats that basically guided our initial planning for the game, right? Like So as long as you're going to as long as you're going in the upper left hand direction, then you're headed over to the Septemberurg area and that like could really help guide you Um Beyond B areium by the way. I love like that was' so cool Uh, Yeahah, And so it was basically, it was basically making all of those routes very clear using really using really clear signposting. But then You know, you put a sign post and you say it's this way, but then you have to put like a big rock in the way. So you're like, oh well, I need to go this way, but I can't go that way. So hopefully the player tries and like push around We tried to plan out each one of those things. Where is the natural blockage going to be? Where are you going to have to root around in order to get to each area in which order And then in each area, we have a shortcut that would lead you back and go back in between. We also have something called area peaks where if we specifically designed, you can't see You could never see Krypt from Bayu or whatever, or you can't see those areas aren't adjacent, but you could never see Crypt from Bone Beach except in one spot. And that's And that's the area peak. And so it's like we had these specific area peaks that were added a little bit later. It's like added like layer cake, each each thing on top of each other. So that way it became like a web Without having a cohesive plan from the get go, it would have just been like big spaghetti which it's which if you ye, which if you look at the map all zoomed out, it can look like, but but I'm glad that it was intuitive. That makes me really, really happy to hear Yeah, and I mean, we had other things that like to help like NPCs that are telling you where to go, the newspaper system, which is like giving you broad strokes And generally when you get to, you know, the They're like the core of Ossics and around it is very like you know, you can get lost and you can you have to sort of find your way to the main areas. But once you're in the main areas We tried to generally keep like att least like a consistent level of like you're noodling around and getting lost or it's very linear. And we try to make sure like they all have the same number of like secrets and they all have the same number of like offshoots and That kind of like consistency, I think helps your brain not be like, I missed something or I need to look for something here, right? And or I went down this path and you know, I went too far down this path, right? And now now am I on the main path or not on the main path, right? Um, yeah, I mean, we were really inspired by games like, you know, the original Zelda and Dark Souls that like don't have maps Uh, I mean, you know, the original Zelda in America came with a like a manual map, but in the manuals, but you know, in those games, you you really have to like learn the map and part and part of the fun is like also learning the shortcuts R? how to get to places faster and how to kind of like just navigate the world in a more interesting way as you disiscover more about how the game works Yeah, I mean, like even original Zelda has like those has those warps, right? You've got the staircases that you go through and there's like three of them and then you have the then what the flute. It's like that's it's like that's another one And you can just by having just a few dotted there, it changes your entire area and makes it like so much more compact. But you need to learn about them in order to do it. If you could fast travel from the get go personally, I could never seem to get a cohesive map together in my brain if I could I could bre itast. I mean, it's like when you use like Google maps in real life, right? You like don't learn it, right? You'owing the road. I'm lear. I'm there now. Oh and then someone asks you like, how to get there and I'm like, I don't know I don't know what to do. I don't know check the map Look at your phone. Yeah No that's what I loved about this game is the like I got lost a lot and every time I thought I was stuck or something like that, you know, like Logan texted me and he was like I' I don't what do next and hes read the news Oh yeah, okay. s. And I went and did that and I'm like Oh, that wasn't just a cosmetic thing. like you should you should actually read the newspaper. Read the news kids. It's all horri. It's of a life lesson. Y. No but I found that like, you know, I had an entire weekend morning where I was playing this game and I didn't really ress the story in any meaningful way But I wasn't really frustrated by it because I was grinding, I was leveling up. There's, you know, there's RPG elements to it. I was finding secrets on all over the map. And I think that was one of my favorite things about this game was just sort of hanging out in it You guys built this like very lived in place that's just full of character and charm and puzzles. And it just felt like a really cool world to be in. So I don't even have a question there. I just wanted to say thank you for that. because that It That's really hard to nail, you know? And especially that feeling where you're playing a video game for a long time and maybe you're butting your head against what to do next, but you're still getting stronger, you're getting faster, you're getting new trinkets, you're getting new toys. So yes that's a really cool thing. I mean, I grew up playing games like Linked of the Past, right? And I think there's like two things I wanted to say in response O is like we like we wanted to make something where like the community experience is part of it, right where you you might get stuck And you talk to Logan and you go, o, yeah, right. Or oh, I't even know that existed, right? like those ideas are really cool. Like when I played I played Link to the past when I was in first grade and I had two other classmates and we could probably barely read, right? So it's like Getting through that game was not easy for us. But every day we would come to school and we would say, oh, where did you get? Where Oh I got to the I got the moon Pearl. What What do you do with the moon Parl? I'm like do where do use the mirror? I used it over here. I didn't do anything, you know, that kind of stuff. You use it to kill Sonic the headedge. Right And And you have fun just like going and exploring the world. I mean, I think like sometimes we like lose game developers and as people playing games, we like forget that it's it is fun to get lost and it's fun to get a little frustrated and it's fun for things that go wrong and and having that community it sort of like helps that aspect of it where you realize other people are having fun being lost too. U and solving those problems and it's fun to solve it like just do it all together. yeah Yeah because I you know, all the All the cheats in the world are not going, you know, and modifiers, they're not going to hold your hand to the next objective. So I thought that was really cool too where it was ye, it it was just like, it's on me to figure out. Yes, we don't have we don't have a yellow paint modifier. Yeah.ight ye that's true. Yeah. this is this is the very this is like a very nice time before the game is out in the universe where like all of the information for the game was like not available to everyone either. So like looking in the media and reviewer discord and seeing everyone talk like as if they were actually on the schoollyard and having to share secrets and figure everything out was really, really cool. That's It was interesting because we had a discord with the people, our friends and family that were playtesting it and no one ever mentioned like no map there not being a map And then we had a discord with the reviewers like to help if anyone had problems or bugs. And then everyone was like, whereere's the map? Where's the map? And it's like,, this is so interesting. this like different Yeah Yeah. That is interesting. Yeah Yeahah, that's just something that resonates with me as what we were all just talking about is the lack of hand holding and just the when Over the weekend because I was so just in love with this game. I played Oracle of seeasons from start to finish just to find That's awesome That's why we made its exactly what we want people to do, you know? Yeah And it's just so fun seeing the similarities and like you have to talk to people in town to know where to go next. You need to bookmark places in your head to come back to and solve and unlock and progress I love I love like the opening scene at the orphanage in Mina feels so much like the opening dance scene in Oracle of seeasons when Din is dancing on the stump and then like everything kind of kicks off from there. Like it's just really cool to see those inspirations and that it felt like I'm playing a Gameboy color game in twenty twenty six, which I feel like is exactly you guys were going for, and I just think you nailed it. Study Play Come together on a Windows eleven PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the unreal college deal, everything you need to study and play with select Windows eleven PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft three hundred sixty five premium, and a year of Xbox Gamepass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller Learn more at windows d. com slash student offffer. Lw suppupplies last ends june thirtieth, terms at aka. mS slash collllege PC Thank you. Yeah. I mean, one of the biggest things we talk about is like we want You know, we are like our first intern we ever had at Yach Club after was after Shouffvel Night finished And he came and said, oh, yeah, one of the things I did when I finished Shovel Night was I like asked my dad about the NES. And he was like, oh yeah, let me go in the garage and he took out his NES and like dusted it off. And he started playing all those games. And it's like, that's exactly what we want like people to do. We like we're trying to show why those games were cool And like why the like the designs are cool. does cool. Yeah. I mean, some of them are like things people can't really stomach these days, you know, but like I think if you play Mina, you' like, you essentially get like a tolerance of, you know, it's like Oh, you're o, you can't have spicy food, but if you eat like a little bit of spicy food and Mina, you'll get like the ability to go back and play those games and like now you like spicy food. R. That's like sort of what we're doing. And then like we hope people go back and play these weird games or you know, even I mean, like the Oacle games, I think are like not as at least Not as far a lot of people those are still easy to enjoy. They're like people can enjoy them easy like more like more easily. But yeah, it's like we want you to go back and see the things that inspired us and you know, that make You know, that make game all the all these games that people make nowadays or play cool There's a great pantheon, rightre we're just the latest ones in a big, long line of cool games that have all been great for a long time. Yeah We haven't talked about combat at all and that's such a major part of this game. and I don't feel like we've touched on it yet. So there's three starter weapons Min it can choose. there's a whip that's very Castlevania. There's two swords, short stubby swords that remind me of the Oacle of ages and seasons swords, and then the third one'es with a hammer that I didn't really touch. I'm not a big slow, heavy combat guy. I used the whip the whole time, Brian. What did you Yeah. Yeah I was I was all it was all about the whip, especially like once you get upgrades and stuff for it. It just felt I don't, I don't know. it just felt the most right to me in this sce. And I think for some of the reasons you just listed, but I also like I'm a threaded canane guy in Bloodborne and, you know, I love the I love the whip in Castlelvania. So here it felt just right. But I loved I actually once I got the hammer, I had a I played almost exclusively with it for about five or six hours. and then I was like, oh yeah, I have the whip. So it was fun. And I'm interested in going back and experimenting with some of the other ones because there's some there's just like some really cool stuff you can pull off Yeah, I mean, to the like open to the openness of the game, you know, like when we were thinking about oh, we're thinking about originally we're just going to make a whip game, right? We're like we're going to make a Castlevania inspired game and top down And when we're thinking about, oh, you can go anywhere and you can get all these items and you can do all this cool stuff, And, okay, now you play the game again What are you going to you're going to play with the whip? Again, it's going to be like a little boring, right? So, you know, then then we started thinking about like the weapons and we start and we started to really think about like, Oh, like these games really lend themselves to like having different playstyle, having the different equipment And it gives you like a really different playstyle than another person's equipment, right? So how do we make maybe we should make these weapons be like these cool different like I'm a fast guy. I like to play fast. I'm I like to do big, huge heavy hits. Um, I like to get close up that that kind of stuff, was like really how we like planned or like planned out what those weapons would be and how they would be integrated Um And I think one of the cool things about the game to your point, like of switching to the hammer halfway through is when you pick up another weapon in the world. We force you to use it for a little bit U And oftentimes what happens is like you get one and then you get the upgrade or something like that and you'll be like, oh, this o, this sounds pretty cool. L I didn't think about using the hammer before, but now that I had this like cool upgrade up, maybe I'll go with it Uh Yeah, and it's been fun to see people that play the game that are like, I'm whip all the way. and then all of a sudden, you know, at the end of the game, they're like Or like I mean, one of our guys here, he was like, I hate I hate the daggers, right? And he got one of the upgrades. He got one of the upgrades. he's like, I'm only playing the daggers now. Nice Nice So jay up I found one of those weapons in the world, likeike you mentioned, and I was out of vialols and there was not a save in sight. and I was like, time to buckle down with this thing. I never used was And I made it and it was really memorable. That's cool Yeah we just time was important to have like five really different differentiated weapons for all of them to play really differently. and also to like do kind of our own takes on different weapons like having Yeah, having a fast weapon, having a slow weapon, having a ranged like a trick weapon, a switch weapon And having like a shielded weapon. And so it's like having having fun with each of those archetypes and trying to translate them into a top down two D view is also like a fun and interesting part of this journey I've never seen what I'm looking at right now. I don't know, ever No found. Oh. There's still I like eighty three percent Yeah in clothes. Oh yeah, that's cool. Yeah, we know we both rolled credits, but there' still there are still secrets to find. I swear like some of some of our text to each otherers just sounded like we were lying to each other. Like when I texted Logan, the thing about the the fishing rod, which I can't wait for people to find. I really thought I was like, Did I miss a text pop up that explain this mechanic? or is is this not I know the game's not out yet. am I supposed to be doing this? And it's like, no man, you're you're supposed to be doing everything that you're doing. It's all good. The boss fights. Awesome. They are so cool. There are some really, really clever, really tough bosses in this game some gigantic sprites have fill up the whole screen. Uh yeah, talk talk to us a little bit about how all those came together because they're they're awesome and they're all so different from each other Yeah Yeah. I mean Yeah, we had we had basically we had the, you know this there's in the the quest in the game is that you're trying to like fix these six core generators and we knew at each one of those we'd have like a big meaty boss And I think we made one of them and The Byu was the first one we made And it had like two sort of phases to it a little bit. I don't want to like spoil it too much But There was like two concepts essentially in there And when we did that, we were sort of like, You know, maybe all these like core bosses should have like big, big phases to them Um, and I think that leted us like be able to add like a lot of surprises to those like those like main events And then with all the smaller ones, I think it was really like uh, which there's a lot. I mean there so there's six of those and then there's twenty eight bosses in the game. Um So we, you know, we were really like, how do we How do we do something here that may be like hits you on the head in a way that you haven't been hit on the head yet, like that way know, it' just got to be different from each other. Right yeah Right. And a lot of times we start with like, oh, what would be like a fun character, like what would be like what would fit in this world of this part of the world, right? So like if you're in the minor area where there's a bunch of mining happening, you know, there probably should be like a big miner that's like running the show, right Um that kind of concept or oh if youure one if you're in the if you're in the frozen train yard where there's there's ghosts in that area, maybe we should have like a ghost boss or that that kind of like is likely definitely We're thinking about it thematically and then we're thinking about like, how do we like what we we haven't done like a thing with a lot of projectiles on screen, right? We haven't done like a big like Dark soul style, like he does a swipe and then he waits like a little bit too long before the next swipe three. Right. got to do one of those. So it's like sort of getting all those styles. I mean, we look know, we're still like drawing from like a million inspirations of games with boss fights in them. I mean, obviously, we're coming from Shovel Knight where we made, you know, we had to make a billion boss fights for a Megaan style game, right? So we're very practiced in the making diverse set of characters for fighting in a boss arena. Right. You want to make them in all shapes and sizes. We wanted to make sure we had small bosses that were meana size, medium sizeed, huge screen filling bosses. And then yeah, we wanted to make sure we got every single boss archetype that we could think of, you know, like a right. We gott to have a piano boss. That's so cool. ike from the other name meaneaning like someone with their hands then like with their hands lam in the arena. you know, got to one there not the bullet. We could have like a bullet hell boss. This could support that, you know, let's put that in there. Yeah Yeah we got to there's got to be like a big shielded boss. There has to be a boss where the difficulty comes from like all of the junk that's on screen that you could attack instead of the boss itself. Um Yeah boss with like mobs in it that you have to like handle those while at the same time the boss is happening, you know, Right. U ye, so we just, yeah, we thought of each one separately and tried to make sure they were all stratified while somethingomething else I love about the combat is that you in order to heal and use one of your vials, you need to attack enemies to kind of fill up that recoverable amount of your health bar. Like heel does nothing unless you have attacked enemies to fill that up or maybe find a trinket that helps with that. But I just thought that was cool that it's it just encourages aggression and like momentum in combat. Like was that a very early concept in combat? or did how did that idea come to be Right from the start. Yeah. I mean, we that was we, you know, we're inspired by Bloodborne and thinking of like, how do we do a twist on a healing system U and how do you do your flask? How do you do your bloodborne? How do we have how do you have a how do you have a refillable health? What could our what could our take on this be? Yeah. And I mean, I I sort of thought about it like Like the way in like Metroid or something, you could just have it like tons and tons of health. Right in in a fight and but but having that twist of like You need to work yourself down to one HP if you want to get one hundred HP, I think like just added this element of like scariness, which we're looking for in the combat and like you know, just being having to like take a risk just makes the game overall like match the tone of like you're in this like weird scary world, right It's also just another thing that you could juice like because if you want to juice your vials or if you want to get trinkets that can help or if you want to do something else, then you can really like crank your plasma and then that's like not even a problem anymore. You're like, well, this is like night and day, but then it becomes like your handcuffs because you can't take it off. I know that's how I am. I'm like, I got to heal I needat the fast teal. I need the fast Yeah. onene of the sort of like controversial things in our development is that we actually we had health pickups in the game and we removed all the health's So we are just like, we need to like this system is like, I think the healing is like a little weird, right? It's like a little weird that you could not heal when you have a healing vile, right And we just said we like we just need to lean into that like really hard. We need to make it. You cannot get health. You cannot get health. We take it out. It'll be confusing to have. Right. Yeah Yeah No, I think I think that that was the right call because it does make a lot of sense once you get it. just like the the burrowing does. I was terrible at the combat in this game for the first hour. I'm like, right, I can't just move around. You should be burrowing behind enemies every single time you can. And once that clicks, it just it becomes a completely different Yeah. It sort of got I think it sort of has like that for people that are playing it, I've noticed it's like this maybe a similar thing to like Souls games where You know, every time Anytime like someone on the internet's like bad out of Souls games, they're like, you got to roll into the enemy. You gott to roll into the enemy, right? which is very counterintuitive. U And I think that's sort of the same here, which is like you got to burrow, you got to burrow into the enemy and get onto the other side and pop out onto the like where they're vulnerable. You don't have it's not it's not exactly a dodge, you know, it's not a dodge roll. It's not instantaneous. We just we just talked about this earlier today. It's like you need to really use the positioning of where you're moving around and that's something that's like a little bit tough Yeah, we I mean, we were really like, we did not want to have a Combat these days is just very much like Dod roll dash like quick quick way to get away. It's like instant an instantaneous response It's like notot that it's not that it's like bad or anything, but I would say it's like very prevalent in the zeitgeist today everywhere from like from C from Clare Obscure to Doom to Dark Age an instantaneous Parry has infiltrated all genres. And we were just like we're not doing that for, you know, from the moment we started. we're like, we want to do something different. We want to be like Castlelvania where you got You got to plan and like know your enemy or like know, I got a duck right here. There's just no way to escape it. You got to use that positional spacing of that whip. to be in the right spot att to attack, right? Um, but but so the but we know that like that's hard for people to like manage these like it's like a different weird idea. And so adding the burough where it's like you'd have some element of that. You can escape a situation very easily, right? but there's still that like jump attach at the start. you have to jump before you brow it, which makes it so you have there's no like instant way to get out of this situation. Yeah. No. Yeah Yeah, that was like Breaking my brain in a very good way where I was like, there's platforming multi dimensional, you know, there's like ters of like you're you're underground and then you're above and then there's, you know, in like in the in Ossex, there's, you know, there's like literally a bridge above you and you're like, how do I get up there? How does How does my brain know that this is a different spatial area than? And then eventually it all just kind of clicks and you pick up on Mina's language and it makes perfect sense So yeah, I think I think that was like Cistently amazing to me, just how how clever how how I guess how much mileage you guys got out of U what seems to be like some pretty simple mechanics but then start to literally overlap with each other and come much deeper Pon's very intended U I I was was I told you guys before I played this game with with my daughter, played the entire thing straight through, rolled credits So awesome. on a genuinely one of my favorite video game experiences and I told her that I was gonna talk to some of the people who They the game And I was like, do you have any questions for them? And I was expecting something like really Profound, but she's kind of a goofball like me. So she said yes ask them Do you like mouse The whole gresset, I like mouse. like I like mouse. Great. Great. I will report back drinking. Well, we all like mouse very much. I mean, it is just an awesome game. It's out may twenty ninth on both switch, Switch one and switch two. And I just wanted to tell you guys that the second I started playing this on my TV, I was like I wish I could play this on my three DS. So I busted out my old Switch light out of story. Yeah play a wrong L and held. Nice. ye Yeah, and it just feels like it feels like a Nintendo handheld game. So I recommend playing in handheld mode. I think it just it sings there And we have we have a few minutes left and I just kind of want to talk about Nintendo for a couple minutes because I noticed in the credits, you guys thanked a special thanks to all Nintendo staff It's very obvious how much love you guys have for Nintendo games. It's been clear since Shovel night like twelve years ago. So can you guys just each talk about your personal connection to Nintendo and why those games are so important to you Oh, that's so that's that such like a big thing. I mean they like U I I got a Nintendo, the original Nintendo when I was three. Uh, it was It my uncle came from New Jersey. He got one of those early like they they had in in New Jersey first, right And he was like a tech nut and he came over he drove all the way over to Chicago and for my sister's first birthday brought this brought the Nintendo and Uh and There's a video of me being like glued to the Nintendo while my sister is taking her first steps in the background Like it's like so it feels like so like ingrained in rain in a way that's like like like I was me like I was meant, you know, like my I found a thing when I was like in second grade. It was like, what do you want to do when you grow up? And I said, I want to live by the beach and make Nintendo The airplane Nintendo And it's just like, yeah, it's just like it's so deeply meaningful to me. I mean, Ive, you know, played every single thing that they've ever made and you know, I'm like inspired every day like when we left and made this h and started Yacht Club and was was like we didn't really know what we wanted to do. and and I said I just want to make a Nintendo game U And and then Sean was like, oh, I know what we should do, right? Yeah. yeah, it was like, let's make I remember you saying that. you're like, I just wanted to make like Nintendo games and because we were making a game and it was like, yeah, what not like wasn't the direction of it exactly wasn't clear But I think that's really, yeah, it's been it's been it's been a good guiding principle for us. And I think Nintendo, yeah, just embodies everything that we love about games I mean, everything I love about games for sure. Yeah, like to David's point, I grew up ing N yes, I'm sure, yeah, I think I got my first Nintendo When I was five playing yeah, playing Super Mario Bros It was like right when Super Mario two was coming out and Zelda two. That's like right when I got. So those were like, I didn't have Zelda one. I only had Zelda two. And I didn't play Zelda One until later, Zelda One was the weird one for me. I was like, this is Or like my, you know, like my older brother had it or whatever. and he's he's going around like in in the and I'm like, what is this? It's like so confusing. I like how do you like knowh where to go? For me, games are like s scrolling, you know same thing like Mega Man two Yeah, yeah, ye, they're sinceZelda two right now. Yeah. I've never thought about somebody playing Zelda two before Wna do What is this? This is so He this is weird I don't level up. Yeah. So I mean, I so it's like we were I was right I was right there and yeah, it's just something about it. I mean, I love cartoons and animation video games and I wanted to be like I wanted to be like a cartoonist or animator before I understood, well before I knew that like a video game maker, a video game designer was a thing. And so yeah, I mean, just that just doing creative doing creative stuff and Nintendo especially has just always been like just my favorite. Yeah, and we've we've done our best to try and emulate them to the best of our ability Mission accomplished. Yeah, absolutely. I mean that's that's how we started the top of the show. This feels like a Nintendo game in all the right ways. It's just great. And last question from me. this is a personal one. You guys worked with Nintendo what ten years ago on this guy So yeah Are you going to give me amma the Ho or ammo? is it going to happen Yeah you got to ask the attend. No, you got to bet, you got to you gott to say tell that score the scores that score iss going to help. That score is going to help right. So we'd love to see it. Yeah. Thanks so much guys. Thanks for an hour of your time talking about Mun to the Hoower. It's just excellent and it was so awesome leararning more. So out this Friday on Switch, Switch do, it's out on other platforms as well, but you should play this on a Nintendo platform.'s just that's where I think it's most at home. Anything else you guys want to shout out? You I just hope everyone has fun with the game and you know, play it with your friends and talk talk it up, yack it up, and yeah have a good time. Yeah, please enjoy it. It's been a long time coming, so let's all just enjoy Absolutely. Well, thanks so much, Sean and David. And thank you for listening to another episode of Nintendo Voice chat. We're usually here on Fridays with a video version on YouTube and audio on whatever podcast service you like to listen to. Ne week, IGN Lve twenty twenty six is here. We're going to have a live show on Saturday, june sixth, downtown Los Angeles at the magic boox. It's going to be a super fun episode that we have planned for you. And you can get a ticket at Gn dot com slash live. so we hope to see you there