The rise of the Rage Game -- and our 2025 gaming resolutions
Added 2025-01-14 05:01:02 +0000 UTC
In Get to Work, an aspiring businessman straps rollerblades to his hands and feet and zips up a tower of precarious ramps, hoping to land a new job that waits at the top. It's a punishing game that routinely sends its hero toppling hundreds of feet, daring the player to try again. Is this sort of thing fun?
Get to Work is the latest in the exponentially expanding genre of Rage Games, a.k.a. Foddian games. In this episode, The Resties dig into this game and the genre. And explain why, for many of our listeners, Get to Work is best enjoyed via Twitch rather than Steam.
In the back half of the episode, the Resties share their video game resolutions for 2025, along with some tips to help listeners achieve their own gaming goals.
Tools for achieving your video game resolutions in 2025:
Game Pass / Apple Arcade - Play more games on a budget
Time management apps and spreadsheets - Be mindful of your time
Whisky - Turn your Mac into a gaming PC
Comments
Tools for achieving your resolutions: Whisky. Great. Sign me up.
The Onj Monster
2025-02-03 04:48:57 +0000 UTCDoes anyone have that link to the cards video? It sounded interesting but I’m not seeing it in the description :(
Devon
2025-01-28 16:12:09 +0000 UTCNot sure if you've seen this technical issue; this episode is not downloadable for me in my podcast app (the prior bracket episode does work though). I reached out to patreon myself about it since it may be a technical issue but I wanted to make y'all aware of it too.
Kayarelle
2025-01-26 19:26:48 +0000 UTCGame recommendation for Resties: Spellmasons, very fun roguelike where you optimize/combine spells together to clear the enemies, nearly tactics-esque. Fun artstyle and music too, right up bestie’s alley
Tyler89537
2025-01-21 06:27:39 +0000 UTCFYI for those who don't know. There's a bunch of McElroy Family Clubhouse episodes where the brothers play Chained Together.
Little Mel
2025-01-19 23:09:53 +0000 UTCWHAT?! Bennett Foddy is an Aussie?! And the bassist in Cut Copy?! That band is legendary in Australia. My mind is absolutely blown!
Nicholas Price
2025-01-19 00:08:20 +0000 UTCSmall shoutout recommendation for the Besties re a new game: “The Roottrees are Dead”. An internet sleuthing game heavily inspired by Obra Dinn and Her Story. I think it is the closest I’ve gotten to scratching the itch I have for those games. A fantastic 5-7 hour internet detective game that I enjoyed all the way through.
Bill Davis
2025-01-18 02:58:07 +0000 UTCJust wanted to shout that this is really great advice! Obsessive time tracking can easily become a bigger drain of your availability than the things you were trying to clamp down on! Having a general idea, and knowing a couple specific things you want to put more/less of your life into, should be plenty. Because I'm a person of a hundred hobbies, I categorize my interests in vague buckets between "in the freezer for later (or never)" and "actively frying on the stovetop" and that's been another really insightful way of looking at what I prioritize and how my days run. Some things take just the tiniest bit of interaction every-so-often, while others take up days at a time without me intending, and having that mixture of reflection and intention is the most valuable part of the whole process.
Groove Wizard
2025-01-18 01:52:31 +0000 UTCI've been thinking a lot about Russ's resolution to stop talking about how he plays games without using guides (which is a really noble cause for him to voluntarily embark upon, on his own volition). I feel like SO MUCH of the binary nature of this conversation (i.e., use them or don't) is from the really limited design of game guides in general. The term "guide" is actually pretty terrible, because that's rarely how it actually works in practice. They don't try to *guide* the reader to certain ideas, directions - it's like reading the solutions to your homework. Tunic (which I played on y'all's glowing recommendation a couple years back) is one of my absolute favorite games of all time, and I got down to the levels of manually translating the in-game language. I have a deranged journal with my notes about Tunic, Obra Dinn (and its return), and Elden Ring lore. But there were a few spots that I found myself butting against a wall or getting a little lost. I avoided any of the mainstream guides, but found a Reddit post that was the greatest little snack. It had a huge list of topics, and a series of spoiler'd lines of text that got increasingly detailed, but started with such a gentle hint. It would build up from "do you remember early on, when this happened?" to just kindly nudge you in the right direction. Return of the Golden Idol has a similar system built-in that I truly adore. The unfortunate reality is that producing a list of facts is *much, much, much* easier than building a series of digestible clues with increasing specificity, without giving away the goods. But I'd love to see more of that in the world.
Groove Wizard
2025-01-18 01:47:49 +0000 UTCThanks.. I had not listened to it yet and was like, this seems like a security problem.
Rob W
2025-01-18 01:40:15 +0000 UTCIt's the "time tracking spreadsheet" solution mentioned by Christopher Thomas Plante
Groove Wizard
2025-01-18 01:38:15 +0000 UTCCHRISSSSSS. GET A PLAYDATE! And then play Saturday Edition from Season 1! Im not sure if the season games are available on itch.io in the same way the rest of the playdate games are. But Saturday Edition is criminally unheralded and a triumph and a masterpiece (maybe i shouldn’t hype up a small 2D black and white adventure game so much?)
Last Swearbender
2025-01-17 22:27:34 +0000 UTCI love fumblecore!
Chris
2025-01-17 13:33:19 +0000 UTCHere you go! https://thebesties.substack.com/p/10-big-predictions-for-video-games
Chris
2025-01-17 13:32:54 +0000 UTClittle gator game is releasing a DLC!
Logan Biedermann
2025-01-16 00:45:56 +0000 UTCThe Trevenant story is so so cute! I love how every pokemon is someone’s favorite. And hey you’re in luck, the Generation 5 Sitting Cuties line came out fairly recently, so this is a rare opportunity to get a Trevenant plush! And it looks like a pretty good one too https://www.pokemoncenter.com/product/701-98776
Kel
2025-01-15 17:12:09 +0000 UTCI did lol
Andy Brommel
2025-01-15 16:51:00 +0000 UTCMy struggle is always trying to balance new experiences (staying up to date with new releases largely) and diving deeply into my favorite genre, lengthy RPGs. I played 45'ish 2024 released games but am going to try and pull back on that to dump more hours into big long backlog games this year. I imagine I'll always go back and forth year to year because I just love both sides so much.
AaronElWhite
2025-01-15 16:13:15 +0000 UTCI think I prefer the term "fumblecore" for games that control like QWOP and its ilk. Also it broke my heart a little to hear Plante say "vinyls" instead of albums on viny or LPs.
Brian Easton
2025-01-15 15:24:57 +0000 UTCSo fun fact! Atrioc was my boss for a while I helped him start his YouTube channel before he had more than 10k subscribers. You guys talk about the marketing of the game and it's politics, so the short story is Atrioc was the Global Marketing Manager at Nvidia and retired to do full time streaming and now he does political/ marketing videos that are fun for the public mixed with gaming. This game was his idea so he found a viewer that was a game dev and publisher the game and had the dev make it. So Atrioc who is in the videos and is the voice of the podcast clips around the map is also the publisher, a high level markerter and brand manager and a YouTuber! He's a really nice guy too, loved working with him!
Ethan Holland
2025-01-15 01:34:16 +0000 UTCI think they did it for the last besties or one of the recent ones rather than a resties.
jtingl
2025-01-15 00:11:29 +0000 UTCSpoilers for the end of the episode but Whisky (the app) is the reason I haven’t fixed my PC yet. Such a transformative discovery
Alex Murphy
2025-01-14 22:12:42 +0000 UTCDid you guys stop doing yearly predictions?
Ccchloister
2025-01-14 21:48:05 +0000 UTCI've been tracking my free time for almost 10 years (so, I'm going say tongue-in-cheek, "before it was cool"). I'm also a data analyst myself by profession so I'm used to tracking measures to create reports which presumably drive performance. Here are some thoughts for other Resties listeners... Time tracking can become very burdensome surprisingly fast. Also, while ideally you have access to all the "data" you create, you only really want to "report" on measures that you'd like to see move (or maybe, not move). As a Dad with a full-time job, I only track a few things. My advice would be, if you want to go hog wild tracking EVERYTHING for a week just to see where your time is going, go ahead and do it, but after that, I'd try to just track items related toward your actual goals. Pick a few things and just stick with them until the habit forms. I track guitar practice and Japanese practice, as well as reading (because I care about these things and want to progress with them). I also track the amount of time I spend gaming, which I treat more like a pH level that I want to hold around 20-30 hrs per month. Unlike the other measures, gaming has an "upper limit" for me. I want to game, but I know it could become all I do, so I try to meter it by watching how much time goes into that bucket. The app I use is an incredibly basic one called "Simple Time Tracker" from the Android store. Otherwise... I just don't worry about time tracking too much! Set your goals, work toward them, and then just try and enjoy activities for their own sake, without worrying too much about whether they align to your goals or how long they take. If you are making measurable progress toward your goals related to your hobbies or other things in your life, you won't care so much about how much time you spend playing Balatro or watching TV.
jtingl
2025-01-14 21:25:04 +0000 UTCLove that y'all made the distinction between rage game and foddys style of makings games. I adore getting over it, beaten it over 60 times with a current PB of sub 7 minutes. In the narration he talks about his inspiration for the game and imo part of the title refers to figuring out the controls aka getting over it. My first attempt beating the game took 10 hours then 2 hours ect, because of the alien controls. Get to work feels very intuitive in its movement, me and my friend played for the first time last night and I joked that the controls are upsettingly smooth.
Walker Weber
2025-01-14 21:12:09 +0000 UTCAs a huge FF7 fan, I totally see how you can fall off of playing Rebirth. The gameplay is great, but the story is often a nonsensical slog and the open world can be a chore to grind through. Also as always I’m 100% with Russ when it comes to guides. First playthroughs should be done guideless, after you get to the end guide it up for all those things you missed!
ThanaThots
2025-01-14 19:14:50 +0000 UTCDid everyone else get a random Excel file attached to the Patreon email? Maybe it's explained in the episode.
Rob W
2025-01-14 15:22:35 +0000 UTCThe Deep dip 2 event in 2024 on track mania was one of the best Foddian games to watch along too.
James Lancaster
2025-01-14 14:03:57 +0000 UTCRe: Frushtick's tweak less play more resolution when it comes to emulator handhelds, check out MinUI. I know, I'm saying do just a bit more tweaking... but MinUI is a very minimalist UI that works well and has minimal tweaking available. It has helped a lot just having MinUI on my main device the last couple months.
Ben
2025-01-14 13:54:57 +0000 UTCHey just wanted to thank chris plante for recommending 1000 x resist finally got around to playing it and it was amazing and made me cry and I love it
James Saldivar
2025-01-14 06:21:05 +0000 UTCMom’s spaghetti indeed.
Andrew Birmingham
2025-01-14 05:54:57 +0000 UTC
