With the assassination plot now underway, Ryleigh and Crowley choose to do some reconnaissance on the Red Sash base – by having a visit to the building planning offices of Osalas! Surely, a visit to a government building will be a simple thing. Right? Right?!
—-
Based in my city of Osalas, the gang of criminals must navigate the criminal underworld to the best of their abilities and discover what keeps the city trucking along, regardless of the cost…
(The wonderful art for this season done by Kerry @shirobeans)
Featured:
Chad (@chads_mind) as Crowley Strixhaven, the Hound Alex (@spiderbreakuk) as Ryleigh Sterling, the Lurk.
Follow the podcast on all platforms including spotify, soundcloud & stitcher, and follow the site @OurMindGames or www.themindgame.org
Welcome to the launch of the next arc of our Blades In The Dark campaign, titled The Fall Of The First Sword!
This season features all the same characters but with a new objective, so if you want to catch up – go listen to The Black Lotus Gambit!
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Based in my city of Osalas, the gang of criminals must navigate the criminal underworld to the best of their abilities and discover what keeps the city trucking along, regardless of the cost…
This time round, with their business set in motion, the gang accept a risky proposal that will force them to outsmart an opponent they cannot take head on – Mylera of the Red Sashes.
Listen here, or on any podcasting platform of your choice! Just look for Dice and Suffering:
Listen!
(The wonderful art for this season was done by Kerry @shirobeans, view the full version on twitter @OurMindGames)
Featured:
Kerry (@shirobeans) as Marielle Ruby, the Spider. Chad (@chads_mind) as Crowley Strixhaven, the Hound Alex (@spiderbreakuk) as Ryleigh Sterling, the Lurk. Matt (@themattattackuk) as Professor Blake Marshall, the Whisper.
Follow the podcast on all platforms including spotify, soundcloud & stitcher, and follow the site @OurMindGames or www.themindgame.org
The world often states that there are only two constants in life – death and taxes. Considering that I’m still alive, much to the disappointment of whoever is pulling the strings of fate, the only constant that I get to enjoy as a fully fledged adult, is taxes. There are more varieties of taxes than types of tea, which to be honest is kind of befuddling to think about.
It’s something I didn’t fully understand until I started my current position, a fresh graduate of university with several part time roles under their belt. Taxes make the world go round after all. They pay for roads, healthcare, lampposts, schools and tonnes more.
Every month, when I receive my paycheck from work, my initial monthly salary is reduced by things like National Insurance, pension funds and student loan repayments. Then once I’ve taken the remaining amount and used it to pay off my essentials like my mortgage, utility bills and things like pet insurance, there’s not a whole lot left.
I’m lucky enough to be earning enough to live my life fairly comfortably, but I am still ever cautious of things like rises in tax rates when the government changes leadership, energy bills ramping up in the colder months and unforseen emergencies cutting into my budget.
So, given the stress that the topic of taxes causes a large majority of the population, you’re probably as surprised as I am to here that there is a game about tax evasion. More specifically, a game about a sentient turnip that hasn’t paid his taxes and now has to run errands for the mayor (who is an onion) in order to get his home back. Yep. I’m serious.
Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. All hail capitalism.
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a gem of a game, that can be beaten in only a few hours but god are those hours memorable. You, play as Turnip Boy, a sentient turnip in a land of sentient animals, flora and fauna, who for whatever reason decided to keep the taxation system that the long dead humans used. Armed with a watering can and a sword made of soil, you have to complete a series of errands for Mayor Onion, in order to get your greenhouse back because you owe a ridiculously high amount of property tax on it. Mayor Onion’s list of demands is odd, requesting things like a fork, a laser pointer and glowing goo that is most definitely radioactive.
It’s a quest driven game – go from point A to point B, solve a problem to gain an item, use that item to enter a previously restricted area, fight a boss and learn where to go next. There’s the usual sidequests – standard stuff like; giving an acorn a deed to own property, fishing a baby carrot out a trash can, murdering a snail that’s late on his rent, you know, just normal video game things.
Why does that pickle have a knife?
If you ignore the presence of underground bunkers, mutated humans, mushroom cloud drawings and the literal nuclear device that’s underneath your greenhouse, you wouldn’t think there was anything deeper to this experience. But oh boy is there a lot to notice on a second playthrough.
From the mentions of New York on all the documentation, to the literal air raid sirens hidden in the background music, Turnip Boy has a much darker tale to tell if you are willing to listen. It’s not all goofy meme references and silly gags, there’s an honest to god tale here that weaves in the nuclear destruction of the human race, a mafia formed of these sentient salad ingredients and even a secret ending that requires you to destroy all the official documentation in the game. Who needs accurate records for future reference, when you can tear them up and set things on fire?
This is fine.
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a cutesy, hilarious, tongue in cheek and surprisingly layered experience (much like Mayor Onion), with a gorgeous song that plays over the credit sequence. It’s well worth the investment of an evening and a bit of cash from your pocket. I played it on Switch but it’s available on PC and Xbox, with a potential sequel about robbing a bank in the works as I type this.
Go play it.
Anyways, this was a shorter piece than usual but I’d rather publish short pieces I’m happy with rather than fall into another writer’s block spell by forcing my work to adhere to unreasonable standards of perfection. Self care, who knew it could work such wonders.
For anyone curious, I’m currently editing the opening episode for S2 of my Blades In The Dark campaign with the Dungeons and Junkiez gang, with 6 episodes already banked and ready to be edited. My new Dungeons and Dragons campaign looks to start in the new year, a good way to celebrate the one year anniversary of Dice and Suffering if I do say so myself.
As always, take care of yourselves and those you love.
This is the final episode of Into The Waste. At least for now. Maybe we’ll come back to this world someday. But for now, farewell and look forward to what madness I come up with next!
Listen here or look up Dice and Suffering on any podcasting platform!
When people stand by their beliefs, they can do anything. The problem they face is whether their beliefs can justify the horrors they commit. Charlamagne wants to fix this world, but how far will they go to achieve that goal?
—
Featuring:
Chad as Charlamagne Salazaar, the Changeling Sorcerer
Once in a blue moon, I’ll find a game that grabs ahold of me and doesn’t let go, regardless of how many hours I’ve poured into it. No game that falls under this special category is ever the same. Which makes sense, after all, we’ve talked about how our experiences are unique on this site before. How I view one game will be completely different to how you, dear reader, will see it. Different characters and their experiences will resonate with me than with you, as our personal history latches onto these plot threads and forms connections. One such game that has captured my attention over the last six months, is Hollow Knight.
Released back in early 2017 by Team Cherry, Hollow Knight took the indie world by storm, with its charming 2D graphics, enchanting worldbuilding, creative mechanics and challenging combat. Falling under the category of “metroidvania”, I was hesitant going into it as I’ve always been a bit crap at those types of games which affects my enjoyment of the game as a whole. However, Hollow Knight surprised me and kept me intrigued from the opening sequence, forcing me to “get good” and push through challenging fights, knowing what was on the other side would be worth the struggle it took to get there.
I see you over there Zote. You stay in the dark where you belong trash man.
You play as the Knight, a feisty little being armed with a nail and a can-do attitude. For reasons unknown to the player at the start, the Knight has found their way to the kingdom of Hallownest, a once vibrant kingdom that has fallen into ruin due to an infection that consumes the minds of those afflicted. The Knight journeys through Hallownest, exploring and combating the dangers of the underground ruins, searching for the truth of what happened and gaining new abilities along the way. Shortly after meeting Hornet, another individual (and the player character of the upcoming sequel Silksong!) who warns the Knight away from their chosen path, the Knight is faced with three spectral creatures – known as the Dreamers.
These three, known as Monomon the Teacher, Lurien the Watcher and Herrah the Beast have been put in a permanent dream state to act as seals on the titular Hollow Knight’s cage – within whom the source of the infection was supposedly sealed all that time ago. Needless to say, it wasn’t a permanent solution since the majority of the world tries to kill you and the evil orange juice that seeps from the forms it inhabits is literally everywhere. So, it’s up to the Knight to venture across the kingdom, wake the dreamers, fight the monsters, and cleanse the infection from the original Hollow Knight in order to save the world. Simple, right? Well… about that.
Tad fourth wall breaking there buddy but true. Now, give me money.
The lore of Hollow Knight is a classic example of the iceberg theory used by storytellers, where only a small percentage of the plot is stated outright and visible for the player to discover on a casual playthrough. Piecing together referenced events from character lines, journal entries and world design leads to yet more questions – something that I, as an endlessly curious individual, absolutely loved. To beat the game normally and never touch the game again would be a massive disservice to the tale that the developers at Team Cherry have woven. There are loads of bosses, collectables, lore tidbits, endings, and paths to follow that you simply cannot cover in a single playthrough. Heck, I’m on my fourth playthrough and still haven’t found everything that I’ve seen others come across in their playthroughs.
The combat is not inherently complicated, it very much follows the tried and tested method of hit the thing till it dies, though some of the bosses could just sit on you and it’d be over faster than you could say “Yikes”. You have a nail (for stabbing), three magic spells (for blasting) and charms that can buff these to a ridiculous level. Like seriously, long nail and mark of pride means I can have a weapon that’s bigger than like two of my character. Overcompensating a bit there, little Knight? Combining charms are the way to victory in Hollow Knight, with some boss fights tailoring themselves towards Area of Effect spells and others just needing a good stabbing to cut them down to size. Or, if you’re really fed up with the fight, just cling to the top corner of the arena and let your minions whittle away at the enemies health. Not that I’ve done that. No siree.
….This is fine.
Plus, there’s always something satisfying about toppling bosses and conquering difficult fights. It’s why games similar to Bloodborne and Dark Souls remain so dominant in the gaming industry – people enjoy a challenge. What I personally think Hollow Knight does better than those games, is it allows you to adjust your fighting style on the fly. There’s no committing to a fighting type at the character creation screen or balancing stats during levelling or having to restart from zero if you decide a style isn’t for you. Instead, you just take off a charm and add another. We all have our preferred play styles of course but Hollow Knight rewards you for being creative, after all, whether you kill the boss with the sheer power of spite or give the boss scurvy and wait for it to die of malnutrition, you win either way.
I want you all to play this game, to get the true ending, to get all 112% of progression ticked off a list and to be jointly outraged and amused by the chaotic memes that the community has come out with (looking at you Pale King memes). Plus, all the expansions with additional bosses are all free so… go punch Grimm in his stupid face and then immediately regret your choices. Go fight the gods of Hallownest and get absolutely stomped by the Pure Vessel. Try the Path of Pain and break your controller in blinding rage. Play ping pong with Zote’s stupid face and read all his precepts for success (seriously Zote has the most written dialogue in the game, and I hate him).
Grimm over here being Edgy TM
Anyways, that’s Hollow Knight, joining Spiderman, Octopath Traveller and the original Spyro trilogy as one of my favorite games.
Till next time,
CaitlinRC
*-*-*-* Personal Update Ahead *-*-*-*
I do apologise for the heavier lean towards podcast episodes and tabletop RPG’s that this year has taken. Between the launch of Dice and Suffering, my frankly bonkers work schedule and trying to find a good balance between my endless personal projects, I haven’t had much time for much else. I love all my projects, so I’m not quite willing to let any of them go just yet, meaning I collectively spend less time on each in an attempt to ensure that I actually sleep at some point (madness, I know).
The support the podcast has been getting is phenomenal, the continual support of MindGames as an entity has been heartwarming and the enthusiasm for my YouTube compilations makes me smile – especially all of your snarky comments.
Regardless! Next week will be the final episode of Into The Waste that we recorded before I decided to put that D&D campaign on indefinite hiatus. I am starting a new world and you’ll get to see that in all it’s chaotic glory in a few months but I thought I’d wrap up the episode I have left in my files and clear the way for a whole new world (cue Aladdin music). Then we’ve got season 2 of Blades In The Dark / The Black Lotus Gambit which is four episodes in as I’m writing this and is shaping up to be a doozy.
If you’re interested in hearing me run my chaotic worlds of TTRPG madness, go look at Dice and suffering on any podcasting platform 😊
If you want to hear what kind of characters I play when someone else is the puppetmaster, I’m a permanent fixture in the Dungeons and Junkiez team over on Visionaries Global Media, where I play anything and everything – from wholesome to psychotic.
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