Stock your inventory with alien plant matter, build conveyor belts, automate stuff, and explore underground caves. We somehow stumbled across a game with so much to do—BUT—so little to do. Join us for a conversation about a first-person factory automation game called Techtonica.
Stock your inventory with alien plant matter, build conveyor belts, automate stuff, and explore underground caves. We somehow stumbled across a game with so much to do—BUT—so little to do. Join us for a conversation about a first-person factory automation game called Techtonica.
Welcome back to Hip Fire, a mini-series where we share our first impressions about a game after 5–10 hours of gameplay. In this edition, we talk about our co-op experience with Techtonica. Joseph takes his first crack at a factory automation game but quickly realizes it's not the genre for him—and gets lost for most of the time. Willie highlights some game mechanics and keeps the crew grounded by ACTUALLY learning how to play the game. At some point, Taylor glitches his way into seeing everything in the entire game—all at once. Despite our gripes with the game, Techtonica seems like a great take on a factory automation game, you know, if you're into that sort of thing. At the very least, we'll make you think about your favorite burger!
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Willie: I do wanna [chuckles] call out one thing that happened during the game when Joey was still getting his footing, probably like three or four hours in. I remember at one point Joey saying, are we having fun right now? [Joseph and Taylor laughing]
[chuckling] Like just very, very genuinely asking, like,
Taylor: "Is this fun?"
Willie: "Is this fun?"
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah. I think that is what I said. Is this fun? [Willie laughing] Like I was really just battling with internal dialogue about like, is this fucking worth the time-
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: -to learn how to play this game? If I know this immediately doesn't feel like the kind of game for me, and I don't know, I think-
Willie: We started this game randomly, right?
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: Like we didn't, Taylor and I saw it one day right after we got off a call, I think.
And were just like, we should check this out. It's on the game pass. Let's see what it's like. And then we said, Oh, we should all play it just to play. And after we played it the first time is honestly the time that we were like, what if we put it a couple more hours in to do one of these episodes to talk about our experience with it.
And I think part of the reason was. Joey's never done this before, nothing like this-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -and hasn't really watched a lot of gameplay like this.
[Alienated by ELFL fades out]
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:17
Joseph: What's up? Welcome to Berries and Blades. Thanks for joining us for a casual conversation about video games. My name is Joseph and I'm here with my friends Willie and Taylor. And we're just three regular guys, debating which fast food joint has the best burgers, but I digress. So what's new with y'all?
Taylor: What's new with me is just answering that In N Out is the answer to that question.
Joseph: Oh my gosh.
Taylor: Yeah, dude. Oh, you're one of these.
Joseph: Fuckin- It's already gone downhill.
Taylor: [Laughs] Oh my goodness.
Willie: Now you're just being controversial-
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Willie: -for the sake of being controversial.
Taylor: Oh [laughing]
Willie: You're just talking shit. You don't even believe that.
Taylor: I do. I do actually.
Joseph: No way.
Taylor: I mean,
Willie: You don't. I'm going to refuse to believe that, so-
Joseph: Same.
Taylor: What's better? Okay, so P. Terry's. I'll take a P. Terry's over that. Maybe.
Joseph: P. Terry's is good.
Taylor: Yeah. P. Terry's-
Willie: I mean, it is definitely is better than In N Out for sure.
Taylor: Oh, y'all are crazy. Y'all just don't like fresh ingredients or deliciousness.
Joseph: [scoffs] Oh my gosh.
Taylor: It's forgivable. [laughs] Your taste buds were burned in a fire. I get it, man. It's okay.
Joseph: We can get some hardcore haters on us [Taylor laughs] for talking trash about In N Out.
Taylor: Seriously
Willie: Yeah
Taylor: Or Whataburger. [laughs] Like any of these.
Joseph: I mean, Whataburger is in the conversation for me.
Taylor: Yeah
Willie: For sure. I just haven't had good Whataburger in a long time.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Cause the location near us is just not good.
Taylor: Exactly, dude. If you get A team or B team is a big difference on what you're getting at Whataburger and B team is, you shouldn't even have gotten out of bed at all. [Joseph laughs]
But otherwise I'm, I'm taking my protein pills. I'm putting my helmet on. Ready to go Major Tom it in about two days.
Joseph: Sick.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Where are you blasting off to you?
Taylor: I don't know, man. I wanna go to the most buggy and glitchy planet in the Starfield universe. I-
Joseph: Nice.
Taylor: I want to find them bugs and hopefully the, the first bug we encounter isn't just us trying to start the game up. We'll see.
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah. You're going looking for bugs?
Taylor: Yeah. Oh yeah. Bethesda games. I wanna see some bugs.
Joseph: [Sings] Bug searchin.
Taylor: I want story and I want bugs. Yeah. Dale Gribbles bug service. Comin at ya.
Joseph: Uh, Willie, who's at the, who's at the top of the list for you? Just some, some options.
Willie: Damn, I mean, Whataburger definitely is up there, if that's what we're still talking about.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Some people will give you a lot of hate, a lot of shade for saying Whataburger's good at all.
Joseph: Dude, Whataburger's great.
Willie: For sure. It is.
Taylor: I love it. I think the butteriness of their, uh, buns? Mm mm.
Willie: Here's the part where Taylor, we get even more into it with Taylor, Taylor doesn't get shit on his burgers. [Laughter] So, I don't know why he's talking about fresh ingredients.
Joseph: Fresh meat. [laughs]
Willie: [chuckling] There's no fucking lettuce or tomato or any shit on there.
Taylor: That cheese needs to be fresh, sir! [laughs]
Joseph: What's he doing, meat and cheese? Some ketchup?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Ketchup, meat and cheese?
Willie: No, no ketchup. No fucking anything. A dry as fuck burger.
Taylor: Hold on. I do like, I do like lettuce and tomato. I just find that they, they can be so inconsistent.
Joseph: Sure, sure.
Taylor: But it's one of those things where the more things I have on the burger, the more room there is for inconsistency. For me, if anything is nasty or wrong with the burger, I usually won't eat the whole thing. I'm just done with it.
Joseph: Oh, you get like grossed out about it?
Taylor: So I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry.
Joseph: Ok.
Taylor: Go on Willie. [laughs]
Willie: I was saying that because what I like about Whataburger in general is I don't have to tell them to change shit about it when I order it.
Joseph: Mm. You're just like straight off the menu. I love it.
Willie: Yeah, just like give me everything that's on it because they don't fuck around and put mayonnaise and ketchup or anything on it.
Taylor: Silly shit.
Willie: They're just putting mustard on it. That's what I need on a burger is mustard.
Taylor: Dude. That's how it was for me when they did the A1, like back when they had the A1 Hearty burger.
Joseph: Oh, dude. Oh.
Taylor: Oh man, that was, it was not only the best burger ever, but also I could just tell them the burger.
Joseph: Right, right.
Taylor: For that exact reason.
Joseph: A1 Thick and Hearty.
Taylor: I could just say A1 Thick and Hearty. It came with everything I liked on it. Just how it was. Discontinued it. Just like everything else in my life. They discontinue it. I get into high school, no more going off campus for food.
Joseph: [laughs] Yeah.
Taylor: Now you got to stay here and eat this cardboard pizza. The first year, I swear to God, everything that I get to in life. If I invest in your company, get ready for it to go to nothing, to ashes.
That's why I don't invest-
Joseph: It was always an All-Time Favorite. So it was always phasing in and out.
Taylor: What do you mean?
Joseph: Like, along with like the Honey BBQ Chicken Strip Sandwich.
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: It was always an All-Time Favorite.
Taylor: Well, it stayed permanent down here. It stayed permanent here for a long time and then they must have had a falling out with A1 or something because [Joseph laughs] they stopped it, discontinued it and now you have to get, you have to be all.
I want no sauce on there except for the barbecue sauce. And then please add one deep fried onion. So many things can go wrong.
Joseph: That definitely gets a burger wars episode.
Taylor: Oh.
Joseph: Burger Wars.
Taylor: Well, I'd be down with that-
Joseph: A1 versus Whataburger:
Taylor: -especially the prep.
Joseph: The Inside Story.
Willie: [Laughs] Yeah, Whataburger is definitely one of my favorites.
But also, if you're going even cheaper than that, like if you're in that conversation about In N Out or P. Terry's, I actually don't like either of those that much.
Taylor: Really?
Willie: They're fine. But uh, if I'm just going for like super fast, super cheap, I'm thinking something like Shortstop in Austin.
Joseph: I'm down with that.
Taylor: Oh yeah, Shortstop is good.
Joseph: Hell yeah.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Just like really fucking good, really fast.
Joseph: I like their bacon.
Willie: And on like Wednesdays and Saturdays, the shit's half off. So it's like-
Taylor: Oh, dude. And that-
Joseph: Hell yeah man, they know what's up.
Willie: -two and a half dollars, three dollars or something.
Taylor: That apple soda. Was it apple soda that they had?
Willie: [laughs] Oh yeah. yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Oh my God, dude, you're bringing back the- man.
Joseph: Yeah, they know what's up, man. And their fries-
Taylor: Ah, that was so good.
Joseph: I will give Shortstop- their fries are great with nothing on them at all. Like-
Taylor: They don't make it home.
Joseph: -don't dip them in anything, like you can eat those fries dry.
Taylor: Yeah, those things are not making it home.
Joseph: And I'm happy.
Taylor: It's not happening.
Joseph: Right, right.
Taylor: They're just coming right out of that bag piping hot.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: I'm burning everything in my mouth. It's worth it. I've got the window down, my mouth open, catching bugs, adding protein. [Joseph laughs] Damn, you just brought up good memories.
Joseph: Yeah, dude hungry.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I would call these level one. Level one burgers. Me and my friend Russell, we had like a whole tier system. It was like level one, level two, level three. But level three-
Taylor: Okay, what's level two? Like a Red Robin?
Joseph: Yeah, level two is in between like a Whataburger and a Hopdoddy. Hopdoddy would be a level three where it's like you go there, you walk in, you can sit down and dine in. There's no drive thru, but they are known for making burgers.
Taylor: And it's gonna be good.
Joseph: Yeah, its gonna be great.
Taylor: Consistency is everything.
Joseph: Level 1 is basically Shortstop, Whataburger, anything fast with a drive thru. And then level 2 are the things that are in between like a, um, they don't necessarily specialize in burgers, but you can go and dine in and they don't have a drive thru and stuff like that.
Taylor: Okay, so level 0 is getting no mention whatsoever. Fuck them.
Joseph: Yeah, no level 0s.
Taylor: No. No..
Joseph: Um, Whataburger? I love Whataburger. Always have that's like my childhood wrapped up in a burger.
Taylor: Mmm.
Joseph: And I like Five Guys. I think Five Guys is delicious.
Taylor: Oh yeah. Five Guys. That is a good one.
Joseph: That's a little bit more. I think that's on like the upper level of a level one burger.
Taylor: Really?
Joseph: They don't have a drive thru, but it's still like fast.
Taylor: You don't think that's a two?
Joseph: Maybe, maybe.
Taylor: Yeah, I'd say that's, that falls into a two. Because you kind of want to go in there and eat sometimes. You got that checkered dining area.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Retro.
Willie: I've only been there like twice, I think.
Taylor: I think to-
Willie: Actually like been to one.
Taylor: Yeah, so I, I've-
Willie: Once was with you, Taylor.
Taylor: [Laughs] Okay.
Willie: I think we were like looking for an apartment or something.
Taylor: Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, that was probably one of the only times I've ever been to one as well, but, yeah pretty good.
Joseph: They look awful. The interior, like this whole-
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: -like, old diner look and like-
Taylor: Yeah, I don't like that.
Joseph: All the typography is all busted up and cheap looking, but the burgers are delicious and there's an episode on Guy Raz's How I Built This with the founder of Five Guys and it's a pretty, pretty damn good episode if anybody's interested in learning about Five Guys.
Taylor: Nice.
Willie: Yeah, I think I've, I've eaten there a few times, or eaten from there a few times, but only been like, once or twice. I think I like that tier system, but uh, I would also immediately get some hate for being like, Hopdoddy is not shit.
Joseph: Ooh. [Taylor exhales]
Willie: That's just one of those places I don't really care about, cause it's like. I'm not waiting in line for some shit like that.
Joseph: Mm. I think it's outgrown. I think it's outgrown, like, the extremely long lines because they have multiple locations now.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: That makes sense.
Willie: I just never cared about that.
Joseph: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Willie: For me, which I don't know if you would count as an actual tier three, I would say my favorite in Austin would have to be Phil's Ice House.
Joseph: Oh, yeah. Delicious.
Willie: That shit's like my go to.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think places that have tots-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Places that have tots get like honorable mentions just because they have tots as a side option. I'm pretty sure Phil's has has tots.
Taylor: Yeah, they had the tots-
Willie: Yeah
Taylor: -but they also had the sweet, uh, buns. Man, there's so many good burgers. As soon as you add the sweet buns, you got good, good meat, and then you put it on like a sweet cheddar bun or just a sweet bun in general. You're, you're hopping up to that level two.
Joseph: All right. I'm getting too hungry.
Taylor: Yeah, yeah, we got to get off this. What is this? Uh, gaming?
[Joseph laughs]
Willie: Yeah, we're recording at a different time today, around lunch.
Taylor: [Laughs] Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, that's where we fucked up.
Taylor: Yep.
00:09:43
Joseph: Okay, so today's conversation is our second episode of "Hip Fire," which is a miniseries we use to share our first impressions about a game after five to ten hours of gameplay. And this edition of "Hip Fire" is about a first person factory automation game called Techtonica, not Techzonica.
Taylor: Aha.
Joseph: We should also mention-
Taylor: pew-pew-pew-pew-pew Hip Fire.
Joseph: Or first, you can find this game on Game Pass for Xbox and PC, or you can buy it on Steam. We also want to mention that this game is currently in early access, and it's very much still in development. So, honestly, I don't know how I feel about this game yet. But, I know both of you have more experience playing factory automation games than I do, so how do y'all feel about it?
How does it stack up against similar games?
Willie: I don't even know that I've actually, I mean, well, I've played more factory automation games than you, but I don't think that I've played that many at all.
Joseph: Mm, okay.
Willie: Like, I've played games with elements of that in it. For sure.
Joseph: Like a Plate-Up or something?
Willie: Yeah, but also, I mean, I play a lot of Minecraft.
I looked it up last night just to see when I first started playing Minecraft, which was like 2012.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: So, it's been like 11 years now. Actually, it's just, it was like August of 2012, so it's just over 11 years now that I've been playing Minecraft, and there are, in the vanilla version of Minecraft, there's stuff that you like, resources you need to gather and stuff that you can somewhat automate.
And I haven't really been playing vanilla for a long time, but when I play modded Minecraft, which I still do semi regularly, there's a lot more automation. There's a lot of resources you need to gather, shit you need to make. So you try to figure out the fastest ways to, to get that done.
Taylor: Yeah. And most of my AI is like IRL [laughs] or most of my automation. Like I love computer automation. It's one of my favorite things to use.
Joseph: Taylor, have you played other games like Techtonica?
Taylor: Factorio. The one we brought up while we were playing it, I think is the most like it, and the one that I've played. Um, there was one called Rift that actually came out not too long ago that was also, and that one was actually more my style because it was tower defense, it was automation, factory building, and you were driving a mech around.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: And you had a mech that you could, upgrade and, and make more powerful. And it was actually, that was a fantastic game. If you're ever wanting to get one of those combos of all the excitement of a tower defense and the building and the factory automation, that one is fantastic.
Willie: Yeah. Well, even like Factorio has. Not a lot of tower defense, does it? But, I mean, there's definitely stuff in there to kill.
Taylor: I think so. I don't remember it.
Willie: Or that will like raid your bases and stuff.
Taylor: I played maybe ten hours of it, and it's been years.
00:12:23
Willie: Well, so, the distinction I would make is I've, while I've not played a lot, I have watched people play, like, quite a few different ones. Like, I was going through the list thinking about it yesterday and Factorio is one I've watched people play a little bit of.
Lately, I've been watching somebody play Satisfactory, which I've watched someone play a while back, too.
Joseph: That's the game I was trying to remember the name of.
Willie: That's one that I've been watching. It's also first person, but that one's more open world. Techtonica was open world in the sense that you can kind of go wherever you want for a little bit, but you are gated behind certain events happening in the game.
Joseph: Right, right.
Willie: And, it's also all underground. You don't get to see an open world sky and don't get to like, pick a point in the distance to go to and then try to go to it, it's definitely not the same thing as Satisfactory. But I think it's, uh, it's comparable to, to that game minus the part where, and I think this is one of the hangups Joey had the whole time and Taylor, that's like, there's nothing to do beyond the factory automation. So like, there's nothing to fight. There's nothing to like, no resources to gather from-
Taylor: Yeah
Willie: -alien life or
Joseph: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Willie: -animals or whatever like that.
Taylor: Yeah, like even a Minecraft has that.
Willie: So there's no, nothing exciting about almost feeling like you might die, you know at some point like going off to explore It's just going off to explore with no-
Taylor: Yeah
Willie: -sense of like-
Taylor: Exactly.
Willie: -Oh, I got to be careful.
Taylor: And like you were saying with the with the finding a point far off in the distance and going to it you might see a point that you're like, Oh, that's a river and I can follow it. And it looks like it keeps going.
Inevitably you're going to hit the end of it and it's going to be just the end of a cave and you take a left or whatever. And then it's rinse and repeat. And there never seemed to actually be anything exciting that we would get to that was worth taking the journey to get there in the first place.
Joseph: I think the short story for me is that it's just not my game style, you know.
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: It's not the type of game I prefer to play. I kind of went into it with no exposure to the game at all, so I was like, kind of like culture shocked. I was like, what the fuck are we even doing? Like there's all these menus-
Taylor: [snickers] Whats the point? [laughs]
Joseph: They're this small ass font size.
But now, like, looking back, after I played maybe, I don't know, I'm assuming I played like five or six hours total in the two times that the three of us played together, now I understand what kind of game it is. And if I would have come into the, playing it the first time, understanding that the game is really just about streamlining, efficiency, building this automation to, like, mine these materials so that you can build different things, I wouldn't have felt so...
I don't think I would be hating on it as much as I initially did, because it's just a different type of game, right? Like, I should go into it not expecting to do things that are not heavily involved with, like, the, the automation parts of the game.
Willie: I think this is true for most factory automation stuff, that it's kind of more puzzler than anything else.
Joseph: Right?
Willie: Right. It's trying to figure out how to be the most efficient, how to stack your shit in the places it needs to be, and run conveyor belts from certain lines to other lines to to make everything run without you having to do anything.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And that's a bit of a puzzle to try to figure out.
00:15:29
Joseph: I like the idea of it. I definitely like the concept of it. I don't like that it takes fucking hours and hours and hours to do very simple things.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: You almost need to play the game for hundreds of hours to like, I feel like make significant progress. And if you don't. I mean, even if you don't play it for hundreds of hours, like, I'm not picking up on the systems in the game very quickly, kind of being thrown to the fatter… the factory automation wolves, you know, like, I feel like I need to play for probably 20 hours to even just get an idea of like, what these games are like, and then kind of reset the counter and then like, start playing the game.
Willie: Yeah, I think it was similar, even for me playing that one, because like, I get what you're saying. There is something about having seen a UI that's similar before, like, or a crafting system that's similar before, where you have to, like, know, like, okay, this is going to show me what items I need to make this thing, but also I can use these other materials.
And now I need to like, think about what mechanical pieces in the game I need to put down to help me get those materials faster. Like, I don't know, there is something about having, having some familiarity with that. Or there's a, I don't know, something about being familiar enough with that, that you can just like, pick up on it quickly to like, know. You can start making a plan if you know that.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: You're like, okay, well, I know I need all of these pieces. So now mentally, I got to think about how I'm going to plot this out on this piece of land so that I can make all these things happen in a row. Because this piece makes that other piece. And that piece makes the thing that I'm actually trying to get.
Oh, I need three of these assemblers. To do that. So I'm going to need to set out that much area before I even like start thinking about what I'm going to try to do.
Joseph: And the world is pretty cool. The setting is on some type of alien planet and you're underground. It's not open world, but it kind of feels like it's open cave.
Because you're just underground the entire time and we've come across some freight elevators that, I don't know if that takes you to the surface or it just takes you to a higher level in this cave system or what exactly it is. But the game looks pretty cool.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: The lighting, the colors, the waterfalls, I think the terrain is pretty interesting.
I mean obviously it's not the most kind of graphically complex game or graphics or visuals in general, but it's pretty decent I think.
Taylor: Yeah, for any kind of builder survival game like that, they really checked all the boxes. Like, the tech looks really good. The, all of the machines, the equipment, all of that tech, like, really moved and did cool stuff when you had the assemblers assembling things, putting things together.
Not only did it look cool as they were building it and you could see it actually building it, but you had the extra gratification of boom. Now a bot's pulling it out of there. You know, one of the small mover bots is grabbing it out and putting it out somewhere else that's going somewhere. It's very like.
I don't know. There was a big satisfaction on that. I think that if there was something to protect the base from something to battle and all that, I probably would play a lot of hours on this game because of the look is so good and it. You know, as you're working your way up that tech tree and seeing how all these things look when, when you put them down and how they move and everything, it's, it's really cool.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: I can see people that are into that kind of game. I could definitely see somebody having a lot of fun with this one. If you're just looking for a chill, sit back, relax and build the thing. And you, it doesn't really bother you that, okay, I finished this task. Now I've got to do three times that, that, that task.
Like that's, that's peaceful to some people.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: I think you're right. If this is a genre that you're into, it's definitely worth checking out, because it does a lot of things right.
00:19:09
Taylor: And it seems to be trying to have an interesting story too. We didn't get to see too much of it.
Willie: Yeah, I think very early game spoilers is like you're being talked to by uh, someone named Spark over your comms trying to figure out what's going on on this planet.
What you just keep finding out is like something happened and everybody else is gone. That's the main premise and you're just like trying to figure out what happened to everybody. And we never, we haven't really gotten to a point in our play where we know, we just know that there's distress signals and we've got to go check them out.
And it's like, Oh, this factory is like not working anymore. Scan some of these parts to like learn about them and then take that technology back to your base. Basically.
Taylor: It had the feel to me, like one of those games that you're definitely not going to meet anybody.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: Like you're never going to see anybody or maybe till the end when there's a cut scene and maybe there is a person, but.
That also, I don't know. I feel like you're removing dimensions of, uh, interesting information there. You know what I mean? Like, I love a game, uh, I'll, I'll bring Prey up for this one. You're talking to somebody over comms, you're not sure if you're gonna actually encounter people, but you do. You'll encounter tons of people, and like, Or at least not tons of people, but just enough people that you're like, Holy shit, that's a real person right here.
And they're moving around and they're doing stuff and, you know, still alive in this world. That's another thing that to me gives a game a lot more interest and kind of like dimensionality to explore. Cause like, Oh, let me go find another one of these rare, rare people that is actually here. And it just makes the world seem a little more alive and real.
Joseph: Occupied, right? Like-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I wish the game dished out the story in a different way. Like it wasn't always just like comms and you're like reading text or you're listening to a radio log.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I wish there was some way like, like, yeah, like you mentioned, like there were people that you run across and they're part of the story or they tell you these things-
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: -or somehow it's just not always listening to stuff that's text and subtitles at the bottom of the screen.
Taylor: And the music's good. The music is very relaxing. It's definitely the type of music that you hear in those games, in those kinds of games.
Joseph: On alien planets?
Taylor: No, no, just uh, Minecraft style, like builders and all that. You get a lot of nice, chill, smooth-
Joseph: Right, right
Taylor: -looped, lo fi music that you could listen to for hours.
And it gets stuck in your head and you don't necessarily notice that it's good until you do. And then suddenly you're like, Oh shit, this is a good jam. You hear a bass line kick in or whatever.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: And it's music you'd never listen to on the radio, but it's great, in the, in the world of ambiance that is like a building game.
Joseph: I like the music.
Taylor: A chillder. [laughs] A chill builder.
Joseph: I think the music is great. Willie and I were talking about how it fucking cuts off for five minutes. You get 30 minutes of music [Taylor laughs] and then it cuts off for five minutes.
Taylor: Well, they don't want you to get too used to the music. They don't want you to get tired of it. So they give you a little break of quiet.
Then it comes back in and you say, Oh yeah, music exists.
Joseph: You know, and I don't, I didn't really get a sense of the strategy there. Like I didn't feel like you're walking into a certain area and that kicks on the music. Like it didn't seem to be governed by anything outside of just randomness, but the music is great.
Taylor: Maybe that's one of those beta things.
Joseph: Yeah, maybe.
Taylor: Hopefully they'll fix that.
Willie: It definitely would be better with more music throughout, because it was one of the highlights as far as like, just being able to relax and just... I spent more time, I think, than both of y'all just sitting at the machines, just moving shit around.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Trying to actually automate stuff while y'all were exploring.
Taylor: Yeah, you had a pretty good grasp on it.
Willie: And then like, yeah, that music definitely put you in the... In the zone of just like, all right, I'm just focusing, just doing this. And it's like easy to do and definitely makes it, it does, it just makes it more relaxing for sure.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah. And I think more enjoyable. Like if you are just moving things between storage or you're like feeding materials into machines, having the music there while you're pretty stationary-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: I think is a good musical environment to create.
00:23:06
Willie: You alluded to this earlier, Joey, about how much time it would take to like get good at the game or to like, make things more efficient.
And that's something Taylor and I were talking about right after you hopped off the other day. We got to a point where we're like, okay, well, we know we're going to stop playing this soon, but let's get to this point. Let's upgrade this particular base to this point. We're trying to gather that Atlantum ore or whatever and upgrade Victor base one more time.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: So we made that our goal. We did that, and it got done and unlocked a bunch more stuff on the tech tree. And then it's like, I could sit here and do more of this. Right, like me I do like these types of games, but at this particular moment in time I know that it's gonna take me like, I I want to rearrange everything. Like I'm looking at our base and I see all the shit sprawled everywhere and I'm like, I kind of want to dismantle everything and start over.
I want to take another five to six hours to move everything around, to get it where I want it to be so it's as efficient as possible.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: And like, I just can't do that right now.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Like there's no way that I'm going to spend another five hours rearranging everything, and making more miners, and making more assemblers, and like all of the stuff that I could do. It's just not the type of game that I want to play right now.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: I mean, then maybe this is what we're into soon. I want to see a game with that level and even deeper. Honestly, it could have gone deeper. Like Factorio, I think seemed to go quite a bit deeper as far as the tech trees and everything. But a game like that, and you, then you start talking, because it has destructible environment, things like that, where you can, you know, you have a digging device that can basically create a ball and dig you through areas.
But I love that, but I need something like Minecraft at the very least. All the elements are there, but I need a Ender Dragon to work towards, or getting down into the pigman lava zone, or whatever. Like, stuff like that, that keeps you going. And then when you get into those, you realize, oh my god, there's a whole new world here of stuff that I, you know, I need to know more about this.
I'm hoping that we're going to see that perfect combination of stuff come soon. Because if a game like this is nailing that side of it that well, it's only a matter of time until somebody takes that, the good stuff from it, and adds in a lot of the other good stuff that we're missing from like an action adventure or tower builder or whatever it is.
I think we're going to see something like that soon because there's going to be a niche for it.
00:25:37
Joseph: The way you start this game, does it feel similar to other games like it? Where there's not really a lot of explanation at the beginning of the game.
Willie: Yeah, absolutely.
Joseph: It's like, Hey, go explore. And then you're just like finding materials-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -and then using the in game menu to discover like what builds what, and what is made of these materials and what they can make. Is that pretty, that is pretty typical of those kinds of games?
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Yeah, I think so. I think that's very like, you find, you find one resource and then you're told what you can do with that one resource and you're like, okay, well now I got to make a bunch of this, I guess. So you just jump into, to making that and something will happen.
Through exploration, usually something will happen. It's like, oh, we could also do this too. Like you could make that process easier if you knew how to do this other thing.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Yep. And it's tried and true, and it's been that way since the old days, like Warcraft, you were playing the original Warcrafts and that was it. You know, Oh, here's your, here's your gold and you got to start mining gold and then, Oh, shit, guys are coming with Tomahawks. [chuckles]
It's time you got to get your warriors so you can defend them. And, you know, then you got to get proactive and go take that base out, steal the gold from them. And like, every time, dude, every time, like I think back to that game I was talking about Rift, and that came out three, four years ago, exact same start.
Oh, we're on a weird planet. How are we going to survive these bugs? Oh, there's a vein of copper. Let's get going. And that's it. And then you start building up the tech tree. That's really the mold for these games. I don't, I don't think I've seen any of them not start like that.
Joseph: I realize that now. I wish the part, like, I like that kind of exploration. I like the actual physical exploration, like roaming around the caves and doing stuff like that. I don't like the menu system and how it communicates what you can do. I wish that was better.
Willie: I will say that was overly cluttered-
Joseph: Okay.
Willie: -compared to other games. I feel like there was just a lot of stuff going on in that menu that, if it could somehow be separated into different menus-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -like there were like six tabs to scroll through.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: And then each of those tabs also had tabs within them or like drop down menus or something.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: And it felt like, that's a lot of information to be in one place.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Well, and it was clunky. So on top of all the information and the crammage of it, was that the UI UX was just a clunky... And it was a nightmare. And I found myself... toward the end I found myself like, getting locked into things. I found myself getting locked in accidentally to modes and stuff like. Oh, I meant some sort of dev mode or something.
Willie: Yeah, into a deep menu.
Taylor: Yeah, exactly. Deep menu. That's, if that's a name for it, that's a good name for it.
Willie: So what it was specifically, so we'll do a couple things to help people out who are playing. What Taylor's talking about, there is a, I think if you hold Y or something while you're in... if you're playing on Xbox, or with an Xbox controller, if you hold Y while you're in your menu, it'll take you to the toolbar at the bottom to like, rearrange the toolbar. But also it's possible to do that without knowing why, why you're looking at the tool menu only.
And it's like hard to manipulate and move stuff around on your toolbar. So basically just hold Y to get out of that thing.
Taylor: Yeah. [chuckles]
Willie: But also [chuckles] something else you said reminded me that... no, I lost it. There was like another tip that I think is important.
Taylor: It gone.
Willie: It's very early. And now I don't remember trying to think back to what you were talking about. Oh, besides the UI being overly crowded. It was something about that, but I don't remember.
00:29:01
Joseph: I think the log especially, like the font size, it's like it's tiny from a UI perspective. Like things are hard to read, and there is some reliance on color that I was having a hard time with from like an accessibility standpoint.
Like it was, difficult to see color changes in some of the machinery that I think meant that it was either producing more or less efficiently. And that when you see it change colors you might want to go and check on it, or give it more fuel or do something. And that, that part was a little lost on me.
In comparison to like using some type of like on screen icon or some other type of shape, something that isn't completely necessary, necessarily reliant on color, I think could be nice from an accessibility standpoint. But I do like that you could see what was inside of the machinery. Like you can kind of, I think, toggle that on and off where you would get icons of like what the, like that smelter was smelting or something.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: So I think that was an upgrade in the tech tree. Because that wasn't always there at the beginning.
Joseph: Okay.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: It also could have been an update. Actually, I don't know if there was an update until after we stopped playing. There was like a, a major update, not major, but a new patch that happened, I think the day we stopped playing or the day after we stopped.
Joseph: Okay. But in between those two co-op sessions.
Willie: Yeah, I think something could have changed that that wasn't always the case, or it might be something in the tech tree.
Joseph: Yeah, interesting.
Willie: Because one of the weirdest things that was in the tech tree was like a mass erase and a mass collect. At first, when you're placing things down, so there's something called a power floor, and you place it on the ground to set your machines on. You can like hold the trigger to make a three by three square or a nine by nine square to put that stuff down.
But when you're deleting it in the early game, you can only delete one square at a time. Like only one piece of power floor can be picked up. But as you, in the tech tree, there's a thing called mass erase that you can unlock. And then you hold the button down. And then basically click and drag over an area, and then you delete everything in that spot.
Joseph: Wow. Okay.
Willie: That was one of the upgrades in the tech tree. There's also one called mass collect. So like, you can click and drag over a number of machines and collect everything that's in the machine.
Joseph: Wow.
Willie: But that didn't happen until we upgraded that in the tech tree.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: So it's very possible what you're saying where you could see the, the icon was like-
Joseph: One of the upgrades.
Willie: -gated behind the mass collect, you know?
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: Because there's no reason for you to know what's in the machine necessarily at a glance if you're not collecting it. So it's definitely possible.
Joseph: Going back to the power floor, when I first started setting those pieces down in the first co-op session we played, I was complaining about that, not being able to delete more than one piece of power floor at a time when you got like a hundred down.
Like that's, to put that behind an upgrade in the tech tree, I think is fucking complete BS, dude.
Taylor: Yeah, there were some weird choices in that tech tree.
Joseph: Give that to us at the beginning of the game so that, you know-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -it's not so tedious in that way. And I think that makes the experience just more enjoyable when you don't have to, like, Arthur Morgan, get down from your horse, bust out the satchel, grab the herb, [Taylor chuckles] say something dumb about it, put it in the satchel before you can get back on the horse.
Taylor: Like for realism, we wanted him to get his wrist caught behind the gun and cuss about it. [Joseph laughs] Like, no, don't do that. Don't, I don't need that extra six seconds gone in my life, people.
Joseph: Yeah, I guess a quality of life thing for me, but that would have been great from the, out the gate, right?
Taylor: Naw there were a lot of those choices in there that, I think that was for me kind of the last nail in the coffin as far as it just not being for me, was that a lot of those choices were completely the opposite of what I would have made for the tech tree, the tech choices, things like that.
Joseph: Hmm.
Taylor: And sometimes it's just not your, it's not your style.
00:32:54
Joseph: Is that where you landed? This game isn't your jam? Is that where you landed?
Taylor: Yeah, for sure man. Yeah.
Joseph: 'Cause I felt like you... I mean I felt like you liked it more than I did.
Taylor: Well there's the the initial phase of oh look at all this cool tech and look at how it works that's how it always starts in any game. And I refer to that, a lot as mobile gotcha style and that, they will get you hooked into it. And it seems awesome. Man, this is a great game. I can't believe it's free. And then, Oh, to get this sword or to get to this place, it's always gated by a ridiculous amount of time that you've got to put in or give it some money and get past it.
And these are, they remove the money part, but they don't necessarily remove the time part a lot of times. And that's...
Willie: Yeah, I think that's where I fall too. When I was thinking about it, I, I had just written down like, the building is fun, but it is, it is tedious, like I spent most of my time doing that while... and I think this happened... this is probably because of our play styles, of, each of us, when we're playing together.
Joey was off, running around somewhere [Taylor chuckles] in some cave, not even sure where he was.
Taylor: Lost most of the time.
Willie: And I was just back at the base.
Joseph: Yeah, that was half my...
Taylor: He says he played five hours, [Joseph and Willie laughing] four hours, of that was him lost in one cave. [laughs]
Willie: And I was just at the base staring at ten machines, like, rearranging them.
Taylor: Yeah, if it wasn't for you-
Willie: That's all I was doing.
Taylor: -we wouldn't have gotten as far as we got-
Joseph: Oh, hell no.
Taylor: -because I had already pretty much given up, but Willie was still building and keeping the production lines going and everything. Yeah, I wouldn't.
Willie: So that's the thing about this type of game. It is gated in the sense that Joey would get to a spot where it's like, well, there's this wall I can't break down or there's this door I can't open and we need to produce 500 of these objects to open the door.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Well, we can't do that, if we aren't building shit back home.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Like, we just, it's never gonna fucking happen. So, like, the building was tedious, but I, it's fine, like, I enjoyed it while we were doing it. Because it is addicting in a way that you're saying, Taylor, that it's like... Well, now I need to know what happens next.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: And like, I always want to make the system better than it is. So like, that was what I was doing. I was spending a lot of time being like, Okay, well, we built that stuff enough to open the last door, but we need like three times that amount now. So now I'm gonna, I need to rearrange this and I need to make more machines producing this one material so this machine can get everything funneled to it instead.
And that's just like, just doing the same thing over and over again. And... I think if we were all doing that and all learning how to do that, we could do it really quick. But I also think we wouldn't have seen as much as the... of the game and seen like, what's coming up or what, you know, what's at the end of those cave systems.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: It wasn't until at some point, Joey was lost and couldn't get back to one of the places he found that I was just like, I'm just going to stop doing what I'm doing, and I'm going to go look for this place too. Cause it sounds interesting looking, and I want to figure out what's going on with this floor that needs to be like powered up.
Joseph: Right. And that was awesome because on your way. I get lost in a different area that was connected to where I was. That was probably the coolest reveal of the game. I don't know if you went and explored that direction, Willie, but opened up into this big like vortex water fall and then there was like this building structure on top of it.
I went down that thing and then got lost and couldn't get back up. [Taylor chuckles]
Taylor: Uh-huh.
Joseph: And I did like that, those moments of discovery and the exploration in the game. I think that part's interesting. And what you're talking about are different play styles is also interesting to me. Cause like I just shot off, right? I'm just shot off looking, exploring.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Willie's actually trying to figure out how to build things and like actually play the game. And then Taylor's doing something that's like somewhere in between.
Taylor: Yeah. Kind of building, but not the right stuff or not in the right places-
Joseph: [Joseph laughing] Yeah.
Taylor: -and going and checking on the baby. And yeah, there's always something ridiculous going on.
00:36:43
Willie: So when you talk about a game like Techtonica, it is supposed to be exploration, right? And it is also just farming resources, which, you know, early on, that was super helpful that you were just going off because you were bringing back shit tons of limestone or shit tons of, um, plant matter or whatever that needed to be used for fuel.
Like, I wouldn't have had that if-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -you weren't going off and just collecting a bunch of stuff. And then beyond that, the other main crux of the game is that you have to build factories, right? Like, you have to just automate stuff. And I think it does those things pretty well.
Joseph: Yeah. When I think about it that way, I think it is pretty successful at doing what the game does.
Taylor: Mm hmm. Yeah, I'm not mad at the game.
Joseph: I also think it works well with a controller.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: When thinking about a lot of these games are probably more designed for mouse and keyboard, I think it... is pretty effective at using a controller. Even though the menus I think need work. The UI and just the UX overall I think could be better.
It was, I think, efficient with the controller. I didn't feel like the controller was holding me back from being able to do things in the game. Um, so I think it does do that well.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: But I also don't have a real point of reference either. Just kind of jumping into this game, I don't really have anything to reference it against.
And there were a couple times where Taylor mentioned that it actually does do it pretty well compared to other games like it. I think that was in like the first co-op session we did, but I don't remember exactly what you were talking about.
Taylor: Yeah, there were multiple things that it was doing really well, but that's, that's why I definitely don't poo poo the game in general, like if that is somebody's style of game, the tech meets building and factory automation style, I, I think that one's a killer.
It's really good. I don't know how long it'll keep somebody interested because we didn't. We didn't follow it long enough to know, Hey, does the story open up in any way? And we got to a point where there was a kind of a extra cave right by where we built our base. And I went over there when Willie and I were playing yesterday and for whatever reason, it bugged out and the entire back wall of the cave disappeared so that I could see the entirety of the game.
Joseph: What?!
Taylor: I could see the whole game, every single cave, every waterfall, everything that existed other than walls, I could see it. And so looking off into the distance to the north, I saw there was a massive waterfall system that, I mean, it was probably the tallest cave that we saw, it was probably like five of those high, at least.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Maybe even taller. But I didn't see anything else.
Joseph: That might have been what I was trying to dig to, like, very early in the game.
Taylor: Could have been. It was a long ways from where we were, so if that, you were definitely cruisin If you made it to that thing. But, the main thing I noticed was there wasn't much else.
It looked like a lot of the same. A lot of the buildings that looked exactly the same. A lot of the waterfalls were like the key uh, features where you might be like, Hey, this is three waterfall cave. This one is two or... So I don't know. I am curious as to what was over in those gigantic waterfalls, but I don't think I'm curious enough to play it again.
00:39:49
Willie: We've said some about the gameplay itself, but I, for people who do enjoy these types of games, if you're thinking about checking it out, I would say definitely do check it out. And I want to talk a little bit about some of the core mechanics, right? It's just like everything else, where you start with a single tool, in this case it's a pickaxe.
And then eventually, that pickaxe can't mine some stuff, and so you end up with something called the M.O.L.E.. And that's what Taylor was describing earlier, I think, that... helps you like terraform the land. You can just like burst through walls or flatten the land with an upgrade and that's your main digging tool that can also be upgraded to like dig through stuff more efficiently and not overheat.
But another big part is like having to actually like research, like there's that tech tree that I feel like every time we went into it was a little complicated. Like every now and then it would bug out where you couldn't navigate up or down on one of the tech trees for some reason. Like it just wouldn't let you see what's next in the menu.
But you have that tech tree where you have to research things, and to research stuff you have to gather something called research cores, which is something you can make in your inventory, or you can automate making them, but you have to place them in the world. to count as having earned them. So by the time we finished, we probably built like 900 research cores or something like that.
Maybe even like 1200, using some machine called a core composer that just stacks them like a tower on top of each other. There's just these orbs of like purple energy that just like, that, for whatever reason, that's the thing that lets you unlock stuff in the tech tree. You have to, it's like, you're gaining knowledge to unlock stuff in your, in the tech tree.
And I don't know. It was fine for unlocking stuff, but it also makes you make decisions about which way on the tech tree you want to go. Just like any other game, I think, what are you going to invest in? But I think ultimately it feels like you have to unlock everything to make the game, not playable, but like more enjoyable for yourself.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Yeah. The M.O.L.E. upgrades were brutal until you had it. Cause that thing, you could bust out two or three pieces of block before it overheated.
Joseph: Yeah, and I didn't even experience the upgrade. That would have been great.
Taylor: It wasn't as great as you think it might have been. [Joseph and Taylor laugh]
Yeah, it wasn't...
Willie: [chuckling] I will say the....
Taylor: Underwhelming.
Willie: One of the first things we noticed was just the movement speed was really slow-
Taylor: mm-huh.
Joseph: Mm...
Willie: -so finally getting the first movement upgrade-
Joseph: Heck yeah.
Willie: -made it feel better. But it was like, no, this is literally like, this is how fast you should be able to walk-
Joseph: Normally.
Taylor: [chuckling] Yeah, you should start, yeah.
Willie: -in the game.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: [chuckling] Yeah, this is a normal walking speed.
Exactly.
Taylor: Yeah, it was like, their sprint was like a Minecraft walk, basically. And that, to anybody who's ever played Minecraft, which is everybody, you're gonna play that and you're gonna say, that's too fucking slow.
And there was...there was mobility bugs too, where remember we couldn't tell if we were over encumbered or if the mobility-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -just sucked and it, I think more than not, was the mobility.
Joseph: At least we figured that out pretty quickly. Realized we like had too much limestone on us and we had to go and drop that off.
Taylor: Yeah. Yes, that's a thing.
00:42:50
Joseph: I had some trouble with the hover boots. Like it was doing this weird thing where it like didn't quite know where I should be from a height perspective. It was like kind of lifting me and dropping me. I was still hovering, but it was changing my altitude for some reason. I didn't understand why.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: I never figured out how to change the altitude on command. There's definitely a, a very limited hover, right? Not limited in the sense of time, but limited in how far off the ground you can get, which also can be upgraded. But at the first tier, you put on that hover backpack or whatever, and you hold Y and you hover. And to your point, Joey, there were times where I was just standing in one place or hovering in one place, and I would hit Y thinking I was going to drop to the ground, but instead I would like go down like a quarter of the way-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -and I would hit Y again, and then I would fall immediately.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: And I like couldn't tell if there was a way to go between maximum hover and the ground.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: I couldn't figure out if you could do that on purpose. One of the cool things I will say about it is, if you were going upstairs, it seemed like you could, it would just like, also raise your hover over the stairs too-
Taylor: Mm-huh.
Willie: -or like if you were trying to go up the side of a wall, it would like suddenly just start hovering up the wall, which was a little buggy, but you could do it.
Joseph: So that explains why I was getting those different levels. I think that it's relative to where the ground is.
Willie: I think so.
Joseph: That could explain-
Willie: But also there was, there was some button you, you could hit the same button to activate it-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -to deactivate it. And it sometimes just wouldn't go all the way down to the ground. And I-
Joseph: Yeah, I experienced that too.
Willie: -I didn't know if that was purposeful. Or, or not how it's supposed to work at all.
Joseph: Right. I don't even, I would not have known how to activate the hover boots if I didn't jump back into the game and you're like, Hey, we're using them. And I was like, can I use them to know what you got to build them?
But after building them, I was like, I have no idea how to activate these. And I don't know if anything in the game tells you.
Willie: No, I think I just-
Joseph: Stumbled across how to do it?
Willie: -yeah, I... was just a double jump, right? I was like, well, it's got to be, double jump to activate your backpack.
Joseph: Yeah, like something similar to, to how it functions in other games.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah. Interesting. In some ways, I had feelings about the menu that were similar to how I felt in Destiny 2. In trying to jump into that game fresh and like the menu system is super complex, but there's no buildup to it, right? It's not like you're unlocking new tabs or new pages as you play the game.
It's just like, fucking here's everything and then spend the next three hours trying to figure out what button you press to, you know, get to the next tab, you know? Or read the bottom of every single menu tab so that you know how to navigate around it.
Willie: That's definitely an important tool tip [Joseph laughs] is read everything that's on the screen-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -because there's definitely like hidden menus within menus.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: If you're not using the bumpers and the triggers to navigate menus, or the left stick and the right stick to navigate menus, it doesn't work.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
00:45:42
Willie: Oh, I remembered the thing I was going to say earlier, which I think is important and helpful. I think Joey noticed this first and then brought it up. It seems like when you're navigating menus, if you're using the analog stick, it is easier to navigate around in the menu.
And if you use a directional pad, it is more buggy, like Taylor was saying earlier. Where like, it is hard to tab over with the directional pad to the right twice and know that it's actually going to move to the right twice. For whatever reason, the analog, the directional pad just doesn't work as well in the menus.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: Yeah, it was laggy and just felt very sticky. What it reminded me of is like an old smart TV UI that's very laggy and get like, [Willie chuckles] you got to press the button -
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -five times for it to move one letter.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That's what it reminded me of, like it's technology from like a decade ago.
Taylor: Yeah. Almost like it, they're trying to be like, uh, clever and retro with it, but it just, the only time that stuff works is when the underlying mechanics are actually current and really good and crisp, you know?
Joseph: Yeah, or that's intentional, right? Like, there was nothing to communicate that was the intention, you know, that using the analog stick is going to be a little laggy for technology reasons. [Taylor chuckling] Like, there's nothing, like, anywhere close.
Taylor: No.
Joseph: That just seemed like a bug.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, and if I saw that, I'd probably turn the game off too. I'd be like, wait a second, so you're blaming your crappy UI or [chuckling] UI choices on.
[Joseph chuckles]
Joseph: But I think in general, like in those kinds of menus, like I almost always switch to the D pad to navigate blocks within the menu. Like that's just something I've always done, you know? It's just like an automatic switch.
Taylor: It's probably what I try first. It's probably where my thumbs go is to check that out, see if that's going to move it around first.
Willie: Yeah. I only have a couple other things I really want to say about this game, which is when Taylor and I were playing the other day, after you got off Joey, we got to the point where we did unlock that door or that whatever that, not the door, but just the next level of tech.
And it immediately became like, Now we need fucking 500 of these Atlantum ingots or something, and it was like-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -this shit ain't happening. Like we already knew we were getting off, but it was like, there's no way. Like I'm not, I'm not going to spend this time doing this, but one of the things that would have unlocked next, which I think would be interesting, and I've watched some gameplay since, is there's a scanner that you can get. Not just the scanner, because the scanner is what you start with, but something called the Omni Seeker, which allows you to scan the items in your base and assign them a radio frequency.
So then, you take that thing and like, out into your exploration, it'll start telling you, okay, there's one of these machines, or this ore deposit, in that direction, like, it doesn't exactly say how many blocks away, but it tells you based on a number on the screen, like, if you're far away or close to it, you'll see it show up on a graph of Radio frequencies so you can tell in the distance.
There's some iron somewhere. So like it helps you go find those resources if you have that device.
Joseph: That's cool.
Willie: But we never unlocked that, we didn't even get that far.
Joseph: I feel like the game is designed to make you play the game to unlock the things you want to start the game with.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Like the things you should have started with?
Joseph: [chuckles] Yeah. Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, that's... and that's usually I think amongst most gamers, like the general populace of gamers, I find that that can be a pretty annoying thing for a lot of people.
Joseph: I find it annoying, but I understand if that's like the whole concept of the tech tree, right?
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: It's to unlock these abilities as you go along. And who knows how much of an endgame there actually is beyond unlocking these things you really want for quality of life reasons, or speed, or efficiency from the tech tree.
Taylor: Yeah.
00:49:21
Joseph: And overall, I don't know, just some... final thoughts that I have, I think the game is kind of cool. I don't have the addiction of the factory automation, where I want to make it more efficiently, more, more efficient over and over and over again, and I'm willing to deconstruct everything, rebuild it, because I've learned some important things in the game, and now I realize the way I was doing things didn't fucking work, and it's not going to be sustainable moving forward.
I don't have that drive.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: It's probably because I haven't played these games before, but I don't know if the reward is big enough for me-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -because the only reward, is just unlocking that you need to fucking make a billion more ingots of something before you can unlock the next, like, barely rewarding thing.
Taylor: Yep, yep.
Willie: Yeah, I will say there's definitely some truth to that. But I also think, and you can't know this from the beginning, especially just starting out, having never played one of these games before. If you're efficient from the beginning, that leap between one unlock and the next shouldn't ever feel like too much of a chore, right?
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: It should just be like a subtle upgrade of what you already have.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: One of the things I think we didn't do right, which I didn't think about till after we were done playing, and I don't know if this would actually help that much, but we didn't do a lot of vertical building. And I think that probably would have helped us-
Taylor: That's true.
Willie: -in the sense that like we could have made more use of the space that we had. And, like, the materials we were already making just below, we could import to stuff above it if we had thought about that.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: And if we had just built more vertical instead of trying to, like, horizontally out over our landscape-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -we probably could have, could have done some things better.
Joseph: So you're saying, like, just build an elevated fucking floor that covers everything and then just put everything on this flat power floor.
Willie: Yeah, like building a tower of power floors.
Joseph: Yeah, that's wild.
Willie: Like... probably would have helped.
Taylor: Yep. Tower of power floor.
Joseph: [in deep voice] The tower of power...
Taylor: [in deep voice] [chuckles] ...floor.
Willie: I do wanna [chuckles] call out one thing that happened during the game when Joey was still getting his footing, probably like three or four hours in. I remember at one point Joey saying, are we having fun right now? [Joseph and Taylor laughing]
[chuckling] Like just very, very genuinely asking, like,
Taylor: "Is this fun?"
Willie: "Is this fun?"
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah. I think that is what I said. Is this fun? [Willie laughing] Like I was really just battling with internal dialogue about like, is this fucking worth the time-
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: -to learn how to play this game? If I know this immediately doesn't feel like the kind of game for me, and I don't know, I think-
Willie: We started this game randomly, right?
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: Like we didn't, Taylor and I saw it one day right after we got off a call, I think.
And were just like, we should check this out. It's on the game pass. Let's see what it's like. And then we said, Oh, we should all play it just to play. And after we played it the first time is honestly the time that we were like, what if we put it a couple more hours in to do one of these episodes to talk about our experience with it.
And I think part of the reason was. Joey's never done this before, nothing like this-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -and hasn't really watched a lot of gameplay like this.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
00:52:18
Willie: So, I sort of cut you off from this thought already, but like, overall, it's probably not the game for you, but any other like thoughts you have about the style of, of game?
Joseph: I think I need a, like a stepping stone game that is like an intro to factory automation, but isn't full blown, big menus, horribly typeset, hard to fucking read. And I need that type of intro game to expose me to some of the like factory automation concepts. Like, this builds that, these are small pieces that you combine so that you can grab, I don't know, ingots of iron quicker and put them in a box, how conveyor belts and that sort of thing can, you know, transport things from one part of the map to another.
But how that all holistically comes together, I had no vision whatsoever of what the space can even become with these pieces of machinery. And like you were talking about building vertically, that makes sense, right? Because you want to like maximize the amount of space you have, but I can't even picture what that looks like without some type of visual reference of like what is even possible in this world.
And those are part of my struggles, I think, of jumping into a brand new game, but also a brand new game type or game style where I just don't have any of the legacy knowledge or any of the points of reference of how it's accomplished in a game like Minecraft or any of the other kind of games that involve automation, like without that exposure, I think it's just...
I have to spend my wheels a lot longer to kind of figure out like, what are we even supposed to be doing? And then when it's like, Oh, we want to make like an efficient assembly lines and like create this factory that can produce all of these materials for us so we're not doing it manually. Then my question is like, is that the point of this game?
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: And I think that's what I didn't realize coming into this type of game is that, that is the game. That is what you're having fun doing is automating things and creating a streamlined process and trying to unlock things from that efficient use of the things in the game. And like, so it's pretty cool, now that I have a better understanding of like what is fun about the game.
And I think the second part of my question when I was like, is this fun? Is, do other people have fun doing this? That's like the second part of the question and the answer is obviously yes, right? There's plenty of people that really enjoy the intricacy of the game and the, the things that are tedious, right?
Or overcoming the fact that they're tedious to make them more streamlined and efficient so that you can like pump out, I don't know, hundreds of ingots, you know, in like an hour of like gameplay or something like that.
Taylor: Once it starts getting quantified scientifically like that, that's exactly where I start to fall off of games a lot of times. Like, if I can see through it to the, I, I, I guess it's like if once you hack something and it is like the matrix and you can see everything in it and how it works and everything, I, I just fall off, man. I gotta have the mystery. Like, that's why something like Starfield is so... exciting to me, is because there's about to be X amount of time where I'm just uncovering nothing but like crazy ass mystery after crazy mystery.
Joseph: Sure.
Taylor: It's probably an ADHD thing. [chuckles] That's probably a big part of that for me. Is the attention.
Joseph: I mean, these are obviously two completely different games, but if we-
Taylor: Of course.
Joseph: -if we compare the exploration of Starfield to the exploration of Techtonica, one is very cold. The other one is very warm and kind of human centric. Right?
Taylor: Yeah, that's true.
Joseph: Where like the relationships that you build with people in the game are what drives the exploration versus like this cold kind of industrial automated, automation kind of type of exploration. Like they're completely different worlds. I'm more in the, Hey, let's like let humans be the center and the drive for exploration.
Taylor: Yeah. Same.
Willie: It's interesting 'cause the, the story they're trying to tell in Techtonica, is one of like, I don't know if they're even humans, they might all be robots, but they are like, let's uncover what happened to our people here, but the way that it's delivered does feel colder in general. 'Cause even I think in the description of the game, it's like, build the most expansive factory that you can build or something like that.
Hope I'm not misrepresenting that too much but like in the description it says, like this is all about production-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -so it feels like that's my only goal.
Joseph: Right, right.
Willie: It also says stuff about exploration to unlock the alien secrets of Calyx or whatever but it's like when you're in the game that doesn't feel as much of a factor as just the producing stuff.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: [chuckling] Yeah.
Willie: And I don't know if that's a us problem, in the way that we were playing the game or, or what.
Joseph: I definitely think it's a me problem, but like, dude, give me something alien. There's nothing alien about this except for the fucking shape of the plants, right?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: And maybe some of the colors, but if there's like alien creatures walking around for just kind of eye candy, that could be cool and make it feel more alien like.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, that's where something like No Man's Sky, even in the early days, that's where it really excelled was like, Hey, there's all kinds of cool alien shit to discover and find, which again, total different beast. But in the end, I think what it comes down to me is I need a lot of variety to keep me interested.
00:57:30
Willie: Well, I think, yeah, we should talk about that real quick, I think. If you like games like Factorio, or Factory Town, or something like Shapes, even, I think you would like this game.
Joseph: For sure.
Willie: You should play it. But if you are on the side of something like No Man's Sky, where, like, gathering resources is part of it, and there's a little bit of automation, but not the same type of automation, this might not be the s... the thing for you because there's not enough action.
Like Joey was like, you know, we've said over and over again, Joey and Taylor were always looking for some alien life to like fend off, or fight, or whatever. And like, that just doesn't exist. So like, if you like something like, I think even like Astroneer did a slightly better job of exploration and gathering resources and stuff, even though there was, there used to be less automation.
I think more recent update has more automation in it, but like, I think about games like Ark: Survival Evolved as well.
Taylor: Mm.
Willie: That's more about exploration and taming dinosaurs and a little bit about, it's obviously base building, and it's only slightly about automation because there's really not a lot you can do to automate.
You're just like gather these resources, put them in these machines to make more resources. And it's like, they're all similar, but some are way more action oriented and make way more exploration than just being automation. So like, seriously, I think this is for people who want a first person automation game.
Joseph: Or maybe something you play like over the next year, right? Casually, and you can kind of just jump in and build things. Like, you can be very production minded, very manufacturing minded. And I think that's why some of the other games don't really have a lot of automation, is because you need that manufacturing, you need that thing to manufacture it in great numbers.
You know, so even something like PlateUp!, like you can manufacture the production line to make lattes because you have to dish out a lot of lattes to customers over and over and over again. And I think a lot of games just don't have that thing that needs to be mass produced.
Willie: Yeah. Overall, I enjoyed it, but I probably won't go, probably won't go back to it. To Joey's point, I would be afraid to go back to it.
Joseph: I would be afraid for you.
Willie: If I went back to it like a month from now, I wouldn't know if I knew what to do anymore, honestly.
Joseph: Oh, sure, yeah.
Willie: I would have to relearn some stuff, I think, and would have to, and I would want to rebuild everything in my game. It would be a huge time sink.
Joseph: I felt that way between the first two sessions, the only two sessions I played, is that I had to relearn how to do things, but it was quicker to pick it back up because I kind of stumbled through it the first time. I would be afraid for you Willie because I feel like this game could capture you.
It could capture you and then you could spend a lot of time playing this game because I know you like the inventory management, the automation types of things, and just a building something that can be more and more efficient and upgrading that thing so that it does become more and more efficient. I feel like you could get hooked by that in the game.
Willie: I, I could see that probably, but right now there are too many other good things to play-
Joseph: [laughs] For sure.
Willie: -that I should be playing and too much stuff coming out that's-
Joseph: Word.
Willie: -that's not... if I get time to game, it's not, it's not going to be that.
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah. For me. Um, it's a cool game. Not really my genre type. So I'll be uninstalling it.
[Taylor and Joseph laugh]
Willie: I definitely, actually I will after this conversation cause I need-
Taylor: Clearing up some room.
Willie: -I do need to clear up some room for other games.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: But I mean, if it's your thing, fucking by all means, it seems like it's quite successful at doing that type of gameplay.
Willie: Yeah.
01:00:57
Willie: Taylor, any other thing that we left out, you want to talk about?
Taylor: No, I don't think so. I think we hit everything. I, um, it was okay. I am looking forward to bigger and better things in the near future. And, uh, thanks for listening in and hanging out with us today. Hopefully you enjoy it if you do pick it up and play it.
Willie: Yeah. If you do pick it up and play it, hit up us. [Taylor laughs]
[chuckling] If you do pick it up and enjoy it, hit us up on Instagram and, uh, let us know. Find us @berriesandblades.
Taylor: Yeah. If you find something super cool, tell us.
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Willie: Yeah. Or if there's something you ever want us to check out, maybe we can, can't make any promises. There are too many games, but we definitely would take recommendations for things to play a few hours of, and give our thoughts on it.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: But yeah, thanks for being here.
Joseph: Yeah. Thanks everybody.
Taylor: Peace.
Joseph: [in a deep voice] Get on the sticks. [fake laugh followed by real laughter]
Taylor: [in a deep voice] Get on those sticks, people.
Joseph: [in a different voice] Get your thumbs on the sticks.
Taylor: [as Hank Hill] God dang it, Bobby, put your hands on that controller.
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
01:01:54
Joseph: Berries and Blades is an independent podcast created by Joseph Bullard, Willie Garza, and Taylor Garratt. Thanks for tuning in, and consider subscribing if you enjoyed listening to this episode. You can also support us by telling your friends about the show, and we hope to see you in the next episode of Berries and Blades. Until then, thanks again.
[Outro theme fades out - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Taylor: Let's do it. Let's talk about tech shit ica. Tech shit. What's it called? Techtonica?
Joseph: Techblonica.
Taylor: Techblonica.
Joseph: Tectronica.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Techtonica. Just so we're clear. So you remember.
Joseph: Techzonica. [Joseph laughing]
Taylor: Techatonica. [with more emphasis] Techatonica.
Joseph: Oh, man. That'd be fucked up if the whole entire episode including the intro I was just saying the wrong name, but doing it consistently.
Taylor: Yeah. Tectron. Tectronica.