Episode 033: Stacks on Stacks on Stacks (feat. Austin Walker)

## Episode 033

*This week, we non-confrontationally enforce theater etiquette, remake Danganronpa with Adam Sandler characters, create a 5-vs-5 Voltron-style mech game, and build a bizarre VR noun-stacking game that harbors a terrible secret. Waypoint editor-in-chief Austin Walker guest stars.*

## Introduction

Griffin starts the show by revealing that Nick's last name is Robinson and that he lives at 414 Fun Ave. San Francisco, CA 90210. They share their *Battlefield 1* tips: Griffin recommends putting anything in your gun in place of bullets, and Nick recommends playing the game on Christmas, when all players are forced to put down their guns except for one: The Grinch. Griffin notes that when you die in *Battlefield 1*, it shows you a short biography of the soldier you were playing as, and recommends playing good enough so that you don't die. Nick talks about a new procedure that replaces your bones with Microsoft-brand bones for the new Kinect models.

*Yummy & Wild* did great because it was such a good computer game. It was published by 2K Sports and Stouffer's, and as a result, all foods in the game are Stouffer's brand.

## This Week's Game

*VR Speed Stacking Cups, but they're not cups, they're cats. (submitted by /u/SketchAddiction)*
***Stacks on Stacks on Stacks*** is a VR stacking game in which players must stack objects as high as possible. Each object has its own leaderboard ranking players by the height of the towers they have built out of them. Objects are rendered in a *Katamari Damacy*-esque style, making them blocky and easier to stack. Towers are saved and can be revisited at any time. Time spent high up on leaderboards grant players a currency that they can use to gain access to new objects. You could form alliances with other players to protect each other's stacks and ranks in the leaderboards.

The game is free to play, but players can purchase a token for one dollar. This token allows you to join other players' games and mess with their stacks with a ball. The invader's microphone is on but the stacker's is not. For three dollars, players can buy a platinum token, granting them an additional hologram ball to trick the victim.

For two dollars, players can buy defenses for their stacks, such as walls or an invisible jail cell for the invader. The invader's ball will bust down the defenses, but doing so will expend the ball. The holographic ball can destroy the invisible defenses easily, but the stacker can buy a gun for four dollars specifically for shooting down holographic balls.

Objects include cats, cups, alligators, folding chairs, old NESes, folding tables, microwaves, Honda Civics, businessmen, a limited-time roast beef, and laptops with www.waypoint.vice.com/thisistheonlyreviewwelleverdoareviewofstacksonstacks open on them as part of the tutorial. Music includes Andre 3000's '3 Stacks' and Bon Iver's 'Stacks'.

Rejected titles include *Steven Spielberg's Doomblox*, *Daddy's Stack Cats*, *Stacking, 2: This Time With Actual Stacking*, *Stacking 514*, and *The Real Stacking*. Expansions for *Stacks on Stacks on Stacks* would be called *Stacks on Stacks on Stacks on Stacks* and so on.

## Other Game Ideas Discussed

### *Dangan Ronpa*, but all of the high schoolers are played by Adam Sandler and his actor friends

Netflix's first streamable game, *Adam Ronpa* features Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, Jon Lovitz, Peter Dante, and Nick Swordson trapped in a high school where the only way to escape is to get away with murder. Monokuma is half-Steve Buscemi, half-Stone Cold Steve Austin. The first victim is Adam Sandler, who is murdered by Nick Swordson. *(suggested by /u/WonderButt)*

### Enforce theater etiquette with a very particular set of non-confrontational skills

You are a vigilante taking theater etiquette into your own hands where the ushers have failed. There are a few tech trees, including Polite Cough and Tossing Popcorn. Each tree has levels from 1 to 10, and at level 10, you can scream at the top of your lungs or throw a full plate of nachos. *(suggested by /u/Smelliott-Stanks)*

### To Be The Man, You Gotta Eat The Man

A VR wrestling game where you and the other wrestler are trying to eat each other in the ring. The characters would be *Gang Beasts*-esque rubbery non-human creatures. If your head gets eaten, you are no longer able to see. There is food around that you can eat for powerups. Griffin tries to reassure the audience that this isn't another vore thing, and decides not to pick this game to avoid people calling him out on Twitter. *(suggested by /u/EnemyOfBoth)*

### A murder mystery but the kind of murder is a group of crows but also they killed someone

*Danganronpa* meets *Hatoful Boyfriend*. *(suggested by /u/meepo\_420)*

### help me get rid of these

A image submission of a crate filled with hundreds of copies of *MAG*, a now-defunct multiplayer-only FPS for PlayStation 3. Every copy of MAG will be placed into the PS3's disk drive, which will then be welded shut, before being sold as a standalone single-game console - the MAGStation 1. It has a 16 GB hard drive, most of which is used up by a huge JPG file that says 'Don't even try it' and cannot be removed. Sony's servers will be hacked to turn *MAG*'s servers back on. *(suggested by /u/jodorowskysdoogal)*

### Team based giant robot fighting where each player only controls one limb of the robot

This is a 5v5 team-based game that gets called a MOBA in all interviews. Each person powers a small mech for some time, after which all five players' mechs combine into one giant robot, with four players for each limb and the fifth player being the torso. Players can customize their mechs, regardless of how well they combine with the other mechs. *(suggested by /u/You\_got\_it)*

### The Dartrix Reloaded

Briefly mentioned by Nick because he likes the name. *(suggested by /u/Tom\_N\_Haverford)*

### BeamNG.gov

Briefly mentioned by Nick because he likes the name. *(suggested by /u/cheat3win*)

### *Transistor*, but instead of a sword, you upgrade a talking vape rig

The sword already sounds like someone who vapes, so anyone could just replace the sprite and release it as a mod. *(suggested by /u/GreenGreenMan)*

### Pound the Pavement

*"Street Fighter. I'm trying to think of the best way to explain that I mean literally street fighter, like you're not fighting ON the street but fighting the actual street.*" *(suggested by /u/InternetWilliams)*

An asymmetrical fighting game in which one player cannot act or do anything, but are near impossible to beat. More specifically, this is a game about being a Libertarian and punching potholes into the ground.

### VR Speed Stacking Cups, but they're not cups, they're cats (Tarantino is the Creative Director for it)

The precursor to *Stacks on Stacks on Stacks*. While stacking cats, two people bust into the room and kill everyone for no reason after having a glib conversation about Wendy's. There will be unnecessarily long shots of the cats' feet. After finishing the game, it occurs to you that you didn't like any of the characters in it. *(suggested by /u/SketchAddiction | Augmented by /u/SketchAddiction)*

## Trivia

* This is the first episode where game suggestions were pulled from Reddit rather than Twitter. It was a convenient time to start, as every other website except for Skype was down during recording.
* This is the first episode to feature a returning guest (in this case, Austin Walker who, since his previous appearance on the podcast, had left Giant Bomb to run Waypoint at Vice).