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The Netflix Gaming Club is a book club for the best video games that are available right now, for free, on mobile, with a Netflix subscription!
[00:00:00] James: There are now over 100 video games available on Netflix. Some of them are the kind of games that you would expect on mobile, while a lot of them are recent or classic video games ported over from conventional hardware. A few of them are entirely new experiences. We are putting together a reading list of the most fun, interesting, or even important video games that you already have in your Netflix library.
[00:00:39] James: This is the Netflix Gaming Club.
[00:00:54] James: Welcome to the Netflix Gaming Club. It's a book club for video games where we'll be playing the best games that are available right now for free on your phone, with a Netflix subscription.
[00:01:04] James: I'm James Carlisle.
[00:01:06] Yasmin: I'm Yasmin Thomas.
[00:01:07] Lindsay: And I'm Lindsay Burak.
[00:01:10] James: Welcome everybody. It's, this is, uh, not actually the show.
[00:01:14] James: So if you think you're listening to a podcast right now, you're not. What you're listening to is a special trailer. Intro episode where we're going to give you guys a bit of an idea of who we are, and we're going to talk about some games that actually aren't available on Netflix. So, a bit about the structure of the show.
[00:01:31] James: For the next 10 weeks, we're going to be discussing a different game that's available on the Netflix service. And talking about what makes it interesting to us and what makes it kind of worth our time. Netflix has a lot of games and it can be kind of paralyzing. It can be a bit of a needle in haystack situation, finding the right game for you.
[00:01:50] James: And at least I know for me personally, it's exciting to have all those games to play, but It's completely overwhelming trying to figure out which ones.
[00:01:58] Yasmin: They've recreated the Netflix watching experience with mobile games.
[00:02:02] James: So we're here to break the paralysis and help you to figure out what game might be the right one for you to play next.
[00:02:08] James: So without any further ado, I suppose we should introduce ourselves. I'm James. I'm a podcast producer based here in Toronto. I run a podcast service called Big Bad Audio, and The reason I'm making this show is because I love video games and I love podcasts and I've kind of fallen out of touch with playing new games.
[00:02:27] James: I find the first hour so hard to get through and I find tutorials just so like, ah, I get bored, I bounce off. And so this is a way for me to need to play the games and to help other people who might have trouble getting through that first hour to know there's something great waiting for you. And of course, I just want to make something beautiful.
[00:02:45] James: And I think that's this show.
[00:02:47] Yasmin: I'm Yasmin Thomas. I am the resident office drone and casual gamer representation. I work in finance. It's not exciting at all. I am partly on this because I like hanging out with my friends and talking about video games. Uh, we can't discount that particular aspect, but the biggest thing for me is that I didn't play a game that wasn't Pokémon until 2020, um, and this is doing a really good job of showing me what the hell is out there.
[00:03:15] Yasmin: So if you're interested in joining my journey of self discovery, another reason to follow along on this podcast.
[00:03:21] Lindsay: And I'm Lindsay Burak, a published poet and writer who has a particular interest in video game narratives, which is why I'm here. Um, I find video games to be a very interesting medium for storytelling because, uh, it allows so much more.
[00:03:38] Lindsay: Creativity and interactive qualities that an audience can engage with and I want to explore that through this podcast.
[00:03:47] James: So now I thought we would go around the table and pitch kind of our favorite games to each other. Talk about what they mean to us and, uh, why they're our favorites. Uh, Yasmin, would you like to start?
[00:04:01] Yasmin: Absolutely. Um, I've already outed myself by saying the only games I played until 2020 were Pokemon, but Pokemon Sapphire, best game in the entire world, Released in 2003, developed by Game Freak, published by the Pokemon Company and Nintendo. Also notable because this was the first game that was published by the Pokemon Company.
[00:04:21] Yasmin: Um, prior to this it was only published by Nintendo. Your fun Pokemon fact of the day. It was for Game Boy Advance. Still my favorite console to date. We need to go back to having to hit a lot of buttons. But I think the best thing about Pokémon Sapphire, like, we've got the tactile experience, we've got the nostalgia for games you played when you were younger in your life, all of that, but I've replayed it and a lot of the ways it holds up are just how big it's heart is.
[00:04:47] Yasmin: It's got a story which explains why your dad isn't in the picture, which is the, I think, the first and only time Pokemon's ever addressed this. He's an absentee father, gym leader, you have to defeat him. Like,
[00:04:59] James: really? Yeah,
[00:05:00] Yasmin: no, dude, it's, they get real. They also have climate change. So if you want to play a Pokemon game that makes you feel a lot of complex emotions, you Um, but yeah, we've got absentee father, we've got family drama, we've got
[00:05:12] James: Speaking of family drama, do they do the thing, do they explain why there's only one bed in your house with you and your mom, or is that like, is that that one?
[00:05:17] James: We don't,
[00:05:18] Yasmin: listen, listen, she sleeps on the couch. It's totally, divorced mom things. Like, what do you want from me? Um. We've got that. We've got some of the best starters of all time. I'm biased because, like, if I could Jurassic Park any Pokémon into existence, it would be Swampert, but Deadass, some of the best starters.
[00:05:35] Yasmin: Is Swampert your favorite Pokémon? Yes. Oh my god, I would ride that thing around Toronto. I would, like, in my dreams, it's me on Swampert's back. We could be volunteer firefighters, like, it has surf. Anyway, anyway, I'm going too deep into my psyche. Um, This is the first game with non Team Rocket villains, so another fun, like, Pokemon touch point.
[00:05:58] Yasmin: The introduction of double battles, which is still one of my favorite mechanics in Pokemon. It's where you have two Pokemon out and the opponent has two Pokemon out and they all battle each other, which is really fun for tight matchups and really fun for, like, more complex status moves, moves that hit multiple Pokémon, because you can accidentally knock out your ally Pokémon as well.
[00:06:15] Yasmin: Damn, cool. Just adds like a level of tactics to the game that was kind of absent in the first two generations. Is that the only Pokémon game that has that? No, double battles get introed in Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald, and then continue throughout the rest of the series, but this was the first game to, to bring that to life.
[00:06:31] Yasmin: That level.
[00:06:32] James: Maybe this is the time I say that I have never played a Pokemon game.
[00:06:36] Yasmin: It hurts me every time I hear that, like, deep in my soul.
[00:06:39] James: I played the Rick and Morty, uh, Pocket Mortys. I liked
[00:06:43] Lindsay: that game. That game was so
[00:06:44] James: cool. It made me really want to play a game where you assemble a team of little freaks and beat up someone else's little freaks.
[00:06:51] James: So, you know, it's a proof of concept. Yeah, have you considered playing
[00:06:52] Yasmin: Pokemon?
[00:06:53] James: Nah.
[00:06:55] Yasmin: It's okay, I
[00:06:56] Lindsay: love Pokemon too.
[00:06:57] Yasmin: Okay, I have one ally. If it was just Jamie, I might be off this podcast. Anyone who says, yeah, I played the Rick and Morty version of Pokemon, to me, is really I'm an ally. I'm a Rick and Morty ally.
[00:07:07] Yasmin: That's been fucking nice, my
[00:07:09] James: guy. Oh, I wish I hadn't said anything.
[00:07:12] Yasmin: I literally have like a bullet point list. Like, you can stop me at any time. This keeps going. But Best Game of All Time introduces like a lot of the mechanics that I think make Pokemon kind of what it is. now. Um, like I would say Sapphire, Ruby, that generation is kind of a big turning point in the development of those games and has a bunch of stuff that other games continue to mimic and derive from.
[00:07:36] Yasmin: So,
[00:07:37] James: it's notable
[00:07:37] Yasmin: in that sense as well.
[00:07:39] James: What about Pokemon, like, what, what speaks to you the most? Like, what speaks to your heart the most about, about Pokemon?
[00:07:45] Yasmin: Oh, the plot is friendship and love.
[00:07:47] James: Hell yeah.
[00:07:47] Yasmin: Like, you're talking to someone whose favorite movie series is Fast and Furious because it's about family.
[00:07:52] Yasmin: The cars are secondary to how much they all love each other. That's what I'm here for. Pokemon is like, you can do anything with the power of friendship and your sweet little animals by your side. I mean, animals. Some of them get too bipedal. I guess they're just freaks, as you said before, but. Actually, Sapphire's another turning point for that.
[00:08:10] Yasmin: You get someone who isn't your rival who comes along with you and who you get to support. Uh, there's this, like, dweeby kid named Wally who, like, I say dweeby, that's very meat of me. He's sick, he has some kind of undisclosed chronic illness, he can't go out into the world, so you, like, shepherd him in and you help him catch his first Pokémon and, like, all of this, like, character development.
[00:08:29] Yasmin: I don't know, man. It made me want to be a better person as a kid. Aw, damn. That's nice. Hell yeah. It also made me want to train our dogs to fight other dogs. So there's like two, I guess, veins that your life can follow should you go too deep into Pokémon, but fortunately I chose the better person route.
[00:08:46] James: So you didn't teach your dog surf?
[00:08:48] Yasmin: No, I mean, I taught my dogs growl.
[00:08:53] Lindsay: Also
[00:08:54] Yasmin: a Pokémon move.
[00:08:56] James: How about you, Lindsay?
[00:08:58] Lindsay: Oh boy. Okay, where do I even begin with this game? Um, so my favorite game is 999, 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors. It's a visual novel slash escape room slash puzzle game developed by Chunsoft. Uh, it was released in North America in 2010.
[00:09:17] Lindsay: Uh, it's the first installment in the Zero Escape series, of which there are three games. And it alternates between these narrative sections which involve Admittedly, a lot of reading, so I hope you like books, and those sections, uh, involve you making decisions that influence the story's path, um, and then it alternates with escape room style puzzle gameplay.
[00:09:41] Yasmin: Oh, ho.
[00:09:41] Lindsay: Yes, um, so the
[00:09:44] Yasmin: thing to It's now a good time to mention I'm also a Saw freak.
[00:09:47] Lindsay: This is a good time because the game, to me, has a lot of, uh, similarities with the Saw series. Really? Yes, um, and, You will see why momentarily. Basically, uh, this game, what I love about it is just, it's so dark but also so beautiful at the same time.
[00:10:06] Lindsay: You play as this character called Junpei, who is among a group of people who've been kidnapped and forced to play a life or death game called the Nonary Game aboard a sinking cruise ship that's modeled after the Titanic. Cool. This is so sexy. You are speaking so many words I enjoy. It's such a sexy game.
[00:10:23] Lindsay: Um, And they wake up with these, uh, bracelets on their wrists that kind of look like watches, and they each have a number from one to nine on them. And they find that there are a bunch of doors on this cruise ship. that are also numbered. And in order to go through these doors without, uh, explosives detonating inside them, you have to find, you have to pair up with different groups of people to find the digital route.
[00:10:51] Lindsay: of your numbers, which unlocks the doors, and I'll explain what a digital root is. Um, a digital root is what you get when you add all the digits of a number together, and you keep doing that until the sum is one digit. So, for example,
[00:11:05] James: the,
[00:11:06] Lindsay: the number, let's say, 523, you add 5, 2, and 3 together, you get 10, and so you add 1 and 0 together, and you get 1.
[00:11:13] Lindsay: So the digital root of 523 is 1. Cool. And that's how you open the doors in these games. And behind each door is a puzzle sequence, uh, a room with a whole bunch of different things you can look at and play with and try to figure out how to get to the next part of the game and the next piece of the story.
[00:11:28] Lindsay: And there are six endings in the game. Um, but they're not, here's the endings, here's all the endings to the game. Do
[00:11:36] Yasmin: they vary based on how many people get blown up?
[00:11:39] Lindsay: Like, does that
[00:11:40] Yasmin: number change?
[00:11:42] Lindsay: Sort of. There's, like, scripted events in the game, obviously, like, you can't just blow everybody up. Okay, you understood
[00:11:50] Yasmin: what I was asking.
[00:11:51] Lindsay: But, basically, the way the endings work is there are five of them that you have to get before you can get to the true ending of the game. Oh. And each path is sort of like a little piece of the story. Like, it's not just an ending to the game, it's kind of, its own timeline with its own information and you build upon that information in each ending until you get to the true ending when you realize you knew absolutely nothing about the game going into it.
[00:12:19] Lindsay: There's so much more to learn once you get to the true ending it's like double the length, maybe triple the length of the other endings. And just, there's, there's so much, there's so much to it, really.
[00:12:29] James: Love that. I love that.
[00:12:31] Lindsay: And also one of my favorite parts is that when this game was released, it had a pre order bonus, which was one of these watches.
[00:12:38] Lindsay: And it is the nicest pre order bonus I've ever seen for a game. It was a metal watch. It was heavy. It cost me 120 odd dollars to buy after the fact because I did not know about this game until after pre order bonuses were already gone, basically. Uh, it was a very niche game, so not a lot of people who I've talked to about this game have even heard of it, but it is a fantastic game and I highly recommend that everybody go play it immediately.
[00:13:05] James: That's awesome. I mean, the visual novel of it, like, has always kind of kept me away from it. Like the, like, I feel like 9 and 9 is like It's a game that's up there, like, people who know know, you know what I mean? Like, it's a cult classic, I think is what I'm trying to say. Yeah,
[00:13:18] Lindsay: exactly. What about you?
[00:13:20] Lindsay: What's your favorite game?
[00:13:21] James: Oh, man. So, in keeping with the kind of, like, genre creep we've been going with, um, my favorite game is The Outer Wilds. I've been trying to figure out a way to talk about this game without spoiling anything, without saying anything about what happens in the game, um, because the discovery of that's, Just what it's about, but let me give you the genres.
[00:13:42] James: The Outer Wilds is a 2019, according to Google, action adventure game by Mobius Digital, uh, and published, importantly, by Annapurna Games, who, if Annapurna publishes a game, Play it. That's just, just do it. They're an interesting publisher. They're like the A24 of indie games. Love
[00:14:03] Lindsay: that.
[00:14:04] James: I would describe The Outer Wilds, not The Outer Worlds, a completely different game, not very good.
[00:14:09] James: The Outer Wilds, uh, is a In my opinion, a 3D, physics based, narrative heavy, investigation slash space exploration adventure puzzle game with platforming elements and no loading screens. Wow.
[00:14:29] Yasmin: I'm still trying to parse that. That was an essay in keyword form.
[00:14:33] James: I've read that out a couple times to myself and I never can remember it after I say it.
[00:14:37] James: So, what you gotta remember is it's a game about exploring your solar system. And so there's space exploration and then you go and you land on the planets in your solar system and you explore the planets and they're all full, like, they're little, they're not like the size of the earth, but they're all different and they all have their own things going on.
[00:14:53] James: And, um,
[00:14:55] Yasmin: When you say your solar system, is this our solar system? Like, are we talking Mars, Jupiter, Mercury? No,
[00:15:00] James: it, it, it's, uh, it's like a little tiny fictional world. Um, Okay.
[00:15:03] Yasmin: Awesome.
[00:15:04] James: You play as this like, this cute little guy, uh, and you're like the fifth person to ever leave your planet. You explore your solar system in this little wooden spaceship.
[00:15:14] James: It's like a tree house, but it's got like one big rocket engine on it. It's adorable. Oh
[00:15:19] Yasmin: my god.
[00:15:20] James: I will say, the first hour of this game bounces a lot of people, including me. I did not, I heard this game was great, and then I tried to play it, and was like, This is really boring, when I first played it, because it's like, the graphics are pretty, like, simple, and like, it looks like an indie game, it looks like, kind of like a Unity game.
[00:15:38] James: And the first hour, you're just kind of assembling your ship, and getting everything ready to leave your planet, and it's great. A little boring. But then, once you launch your ship into space, your first challenge is learning how to fly this physics based treehouse rocket ship. Oh, they make
[00:15:52] Yasmin: you do work.
[00:15:53] James: Oh, you gotta fly it, and the physics are real.
[00:15:55] James: Like, you gotta get your acceleration right. And, like, if you try and land on a planet, you have to be careful that you don't, A, like, slingshot yourself with the gravity of the planet out into deep space, or, like, get your angle wrong and get, like, sucked into the sun. Like, that happened to me a lot. But once you learn to fly your ship, your second challenge is to land without killing yourself.
[00:16:16] James: That takes a little bit of practice. time too. Once you're able to land without dying, you can start exploring these worlds and the puzzles and mysteries they have inside them. Um, you have this device that like translates these ancient writings from the civilization that lived in your solar system millennia before you and they all died out and you get to kind of figure out the history of their culture and like what happened to them.
[00:16:36] Yasmin: So archaeology as well.
[00:16:38] James: It's, there's a lot of archaeology, it feels a lot like archaeology. It feels like a game about The early days of the space program, and like, what if they just found ancient writing on the moon? And like, what would, what would have happened from that? There's a lot more to it than that.
[00:16:52] James: There's a lot more to it than that, but I think I'm going to leave it there. I, I will say this game, The Outer Wilds, I love an investigation game. I love a game with a map and with a knowledge map. I love a game where you can fly a spaceship. I love a game where you can smoothly go from space to landing on a planet all in one screen and you're completely in control of it the whole time.
[00:17:10] James: That all rocks. But what I love most about this game is what it has to say about life and what it has to say about death and what it has to say about our place in the universe. Carl Sagan had a quote that I'm going to get wrong, but it's along the lines of we are the universe's way. Of learning about itself, and that is like the core of this game.
[00:17:31] Lindsay: Oh yeah.
[00:17:33] James: It's It's just so beautiful, and if you want a game that'll make you cry, The Outer Wilds.
[00:17:39] Lindsay: So I've been like avoiding spoilers for this game because I've just heard such amazing things about it. Um, and I'm really excited to play it now. I'm definitely gonna have to bump that up the priority list.
[00:17:52] James: It's like a game made in a lab for me. It was like amazing.
[00:17:56] Yasmin: It let you live your Star Trek dreams.
[00:17:58] James: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I felt like Buzz Aldrin, man. I felt like, oh, maybe a nicer guy. Felt like Neil Armstrong, you know? Anyway, I think that will give you enough of an idea of who we are and where we're coming from that you can now be launched into all of our hot takes.
[00:18:14] James: And now you'll
[00:18:15] Yasmin: understand why all our opinions are correct.
[00:18:17] James: Exactly. Exactly. Uh, so Our first episode, our first real episode, is going to be Spiritfarer. And, uh, Lindsay, why don't you read us the description of Spiritfarer from Netflix?
[00:18:30] Lindsay: You're a fairy master to the great beyond. Build a boat to explore, then care for spirits before releasing them into the afterlife in this moving game.
[00:18:39] Lindsay: Game, I think moving an understatement.
[00:18:42] James: Yeah, I think moving's a good, uh, uh, double meaning, oh, you know, you're on a boat moving the boat. True. That's true. Anyway, I think Spirit Fair is gonna be a lot of fun. I hope you guys join us and, uh, we'll see you next time on the Netflix Gaming Club. See you soon.
[00:18:54] James: Bye everybody. Bye bye.
[00:18:58] James: did I fuck up the ending?
[00:19:05] Yasmin: The Netflix Gaming Club is produced by Big Bad Audio and engineered by Andrew Blythe. The show is hosted by Lindsey Burak, James Carlisle, and myself, Yasmin Thomas. We'd like to thank The High Loves for the use of our theme song, Sure of It. Check them out wherever you listen to music. As always, if you like what you hear and want to help us grow, please rate us on Apple or Spotify.
[00:19:24] Yasmin: The higher, the better. And if you're not into public decoration, please subscribe. You can always tell a friend, or find someone to play these games together with, and we'll be here for you guys after you do. Special thanks to Windy Pretty, Rob Schulte, and the Netflix Gamers Discord community.