355. Slapped Silly by the Fondue Vortex

Lords:

• Kevin
  
• Nicholas

Topics:

• Mina the Hollower, game learning/difficulty curves adjusting challenge through options/modifiers
  
• Not having a day job any more, the blank page creative block is real. How do i come up with ideas if I don't hate my day job
  
• Arcade 1 Up
  
• "Hail, Poetry," from The Pirates of Penzance, by W.S. Gilbert
  
  • https://karenspoetryspot.blogspot.com/2007/11/hail-poetry-by-ws-gilbert.html
    
• Wanting to make better food at home BUT within the unique constraints of cooking at home, budget, time, specialised equipment.
  
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkXy12xVnRs
    
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b38nrUFFpaw

Microtopics:

• The only show on the Internet where topics are discussed.
  
• You Are Light.
  
• Working with Planetaria.
  
• The Game Club.
  
• A way to curate and discuss games.
  
• Steam reviews that don't count.
  
• Completely giving up on tuning your game's difficulty curve and just dropping the tuning parameters in the player's lap.
  
• Normie focus testing.
  
• Putting the half damage option in the gameplay settings and then putting the no damage option in the accessibility settings.
  
• Whether it's still crunch if you're doing it to yourself.
  
• Invalidating achievements when the player uses the accessibility options because you still think of them as cheats and want the player to think of them as cheats even as you call them accessibility options.
  
• Throwing poop over the wall until the boss dies.
  
• Needing a big brother to hand your controller to to play the hard parts.
  
• Making all your best prototypes when you're unhappy at your job.
  
• Have you heard the good word about PiCoSteveMo?
  
• Coming up with a commercially viable prototype ASAP.
  
• Making the first thing that comes to mind as quickly as possible and then throwing it away immediately.
  
• Becoming a postie so you finally have a day job to hate.
  
• Quote-unquote living the dream
  
• Why you only get one life in Canabalt.
  
• Kids looking at Las Vegas and thinking it looks like bullshit for old people but they still like the feeling of gambling so the play a lot of Binding of Isaac instead.
  
• Opening up Pokemon cards packs on Twitch.
  
• Opening the pack of Magic cards because you want to feel that rush but you feel nothing because you don't play Magic and don't know what cards are good.
  
• Looking for the Magic cards with the coolest quotes on them.
  
• Installing a Pac-Man cabinet to liven up your living room's aesthetics.
  
• An arcade cabinet that has no controls, it just cycles through the attract modes of various arcade games.
  
• Why you want the arcade cabinet to be taller than you are.
  
• Putting a tablecloth over the cocktail arcade cabinet when you have your fancy guests over but it keeps making the weird noises so they're like "what's going on down there??"
  
• Topic Lords off-season attract mode game jam.
  
• Creepypasta attract modes.
  
• The four player Avengers arcade game where the attract mode was just the entire running time of Avengers: Age of Ultron.
  
• The Minecraft Dungeons arcade machine.
  
• Arcade games extruding collectible hero cards.
  
• The F-Zero arcade game that you can put your GameCube memory card into to unlock exclusive levels.
  
• Zoomers no longer having access to video games because legally they're considered "experiences."
  
• Gilbert and Sullivan.
  
• Divine Emollient: it's life's moisturizer.
  
• Stopping what you're doing to go listen to Pirates of Penzance.
  
• Kevin Kline as the Pirate King.
  
• Constant emollients on hand.
  
• Poetry getting down on one knee and proposing to you.
  
• The state of musical theater in the late 1800s.
  
• Contexts in which you hear about flowing founts.
  
• Poetry's ability to make you want to moisturize.
  
• Being into cooking but everyone else suddenly getting way more into cooking.
  
• The Mr. Beastification of food Youtube.
  
• Using broth from concentrate and it's fine because you don't know any better.
  
• Finding new vegetables and trying to figure out how to cook them.
  
• Whole spices vs. pre-ground spices.
  
• Team Less Time.
  
• Why you keep hearing exhortations not to deep fry a turkey.
  
• Deep frying gnocchi.
  
• Slapped silly by the Fondue Vortex.
  
• Which family gets the onion bloomer this week and is eating nothing but blooming onions all week.
  
• Relative onion size on different continents.
  
• WoW Classic but for fast food.