The Impromptu GOTY (feat. Dicevaders, Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, Emio The Smiling Man, and more!)

Brendon Bigley (0:14)

Hello, and welcome to Into the Aether. It's a Low Key Video Game Podcast. My name is Brendon Bigley.

Stephen Hilger (0:21)

My name is Stephen Hilger. Is that right? Video game?

Brendon Bigley (0:25)

Game, it's not just a video, it's like a game that is a video.

Stephen Hilger (0:29)

I just want to say at the top here, we got a very nice shout out on Triple Click recently.

Brendon Bigley (0:34)

Oh yeah.

Stephen Hilger (0:35)

I wanted to thank Kirk over Blue Sky, but he doesn't have DMs enabled, so I'm doing this weird DM podcast episode version. I just want to say I've never been more flattered to be called a freak in my life. So thank you. Thank you all three of you for the kind words. That was nice to hear.

Brendon Bigley (0:51)

Yeah, that's very nice.

Stephen Hilger (0:52)

Yeah.

Brendon Bigley (0:53)

What is it? What is a DM when it happens public?

Stephen Hilger (0:55)

I guess that's just, it's, it's sort of what the NPCs do in Wind Waker where they go like, hey, on an island. Yeah. It's an IDM.

Brendon Bigley (1:03)

It's an indirect message. It may or may not make its way to sender, you know?

Stephen Hilger (1:09)

And unlike your phone buzzing, when you get a text, when you get an IDM, you get like a chill down your spine, like, I didn't want that. I didn't like it. Right.

Brendon Bigley (1:17)

Yeah. It's that thing where like somebody's talking about me. Are your ears burning?

Stephen Hilger (1:20)

Yes.

Anyway, it was a fun episode about the game. It was fun to hear. There are three different perspectives on it. It was almost like Fortune's Weave. I can't do it. I can't commit to that bit.

Brendon Bigley (1:31)

Unsurprisingly, folks, we will have another Fortune's Weave segment at the end of this episode. Perfect Birdtime will return in Avengers Doomsday at the end of this episode. But we have other games we're going to talk about before then, just to make sure that those of you non-Fire Emblem heads, of which there are at least probably three of you, but no more than that, you'll have those.

Stephen Hilger (1:52)

Non-Flame Lords.

Brendon Bigley (1:53)

Non-Flame Lords. Yeah, you'll have something else to listen to.

Stephen Hilger (1:56)

Also Happy October.

Brendon Bigley (1:57)

Happy October, yeah.

Stephen Hilger (1:58)

Foreshadowing for maybe what's coming later.

Brendon Bigley (2:00)

Ooh.

Stephen Hilger (2:02)

Yeah, exactly right.

Brendon Bigley (2:04)

Let's talk about some stuff that is not scary and is not Fire Emblem, but I'm sure we'll find a way to make both happen.

Stephen Hilger (2:11)

Turn Base and let's do Rewind Turns.

Brendon Bigley (2:14)

We're talking about Dicevaders.

Stephen Hilger (2:15)

Yes, it's the new game from Pangonauts, who you may know for StarVaders, one of my favorite games from last year.

Brendon Bigley (2:21)

Yeah, you loved StarVaders, which I think is a good place to start.

Stephen Hilger (2:24)

Yeah, so StarVaders, for those who haven't played it, it's a really great mashup of ideas. It is a rogue-lite, probably most visibly inspired by Slay the Spire. So the premise is you are a pilot of some type of mech. There are three different mechs, each with three different pilots. Or actually one mech has four pilots, but regardless, you kind of have... It's as if the characters in Slay the Spire had variants on each of them. So there's, I think, the gunner pilot, sorry, the gunner mech, and then there's a mech with a sword, and there's a mech that kind of summons strange creatures. And each pilot has a different central ability. So the main pilot you start with, Roxy, can burn cards, which I'll get to in a second. The second pilot, Noelle, can freeze cards and use on a future turn. Basically, that game was a deck builder like, say, The Spire, but it almost had this Mega Man Battle Network grid structure, where you were positioning your mech on this grid and choosing where to fire your weapon and take out these kind of alien robot creatures, which obviously, in the title, it's an homage to Space Invaders as well. So the combination of Space Invaders with, say, Spire with Mega Man Battle Network and the Game Boy Advance aesthetic and the energy of it, I just really, really loved it. I thought it was really special. I played a lot of it. At this point, it is now coming to Switch, which I think is going to be really big for it. I think it's a great game for the Switch. And also, since release, they've added a lot of free updates to it. Like, there's a whole second game, basically, worth of content there. So if you haven't played Star Vaders, now is the time. And get it on Switch, maybe.