Episode 050: CoolGames Inc in the City

## Episode 050

**Soundcloud/Art19 description:**

*In this special video episode of CoolGames Inc (available on youtube.com/polygon), Griffin and Nick lay out their plans for Taste Buds, a friends-only cooperative VR food experience.*

**YouTube description:**

*In this special 50th episode of CoolGames Inc, Griffin and Nick make a video game together IRL.*

## Introduction

Having met up in New York City to record a 15-minute video episode of CoolGames Inc, Griffin and Nick briefly discuss the sound of their microphones and the amount of pollution produced by New York's taxis, before jumping straight into submissions.

## This Episode's Game

***Taste Buds.** Cooperative VR game in which you have to feed one another (submitted by /u/greetingsfellowhuman)*
***Taste Buds: Meat on dem Bones*** is a cooperative VR game in which two players sit at a table wearing VR headsets and must feed one another. They can see each other's virtual bodies, but they can't eat anything for themselves. Each player has a constantly-decreasing hunger meter which is broken down into specific submeters, which may include sour, umami/savory, meat, thirst, sticky, peanuts, or soup. Feeding food to a player refills the corresponding portions of their hunger meter and multiple meters can be satisfied at once. The players must fight off wave-based hunger as their submeters become increasingly granular until they eventually lose. Players can lose hitpoints by touching hot soup with their bare hands.

While primarily designed to be an intimate one-on-one experience, *Taste Buds* supports up to eight players and up to a thousand spectators. It also has a matchmaking mode where you can play with strangers, and a Party Mode which replaces the avatars with "big, really frightening" inflated faces (similar to the *Feed* *Big Bertha* arcade game).

The tutorial is the full runtime of *Beezbo's Adventures* and cannot be skipped. This ensures an extremely polite playerbase which knows their dinner manners.

## Other Game Ideas Discussed

### Whatever the fuck this is

An image submission of the VHS cover for *Beezbo's Adventures: How To Behave Like A Human Being*. Griffin is familiar with this"entertaining guide to children's manners", because he once rented it for free from Blockbuster Video. He would love to see a video game adaptation because "some of the manners" are absent from *Call of Duty*, while Nick points out that in most video games, every button on the controller does something rude. (submitted by /u/townofatlantis)

### The Great British *Quake* Off

*"Mary Berry's return to the role that launched her career - eSports commentating" (submitted by /u/Fletcherville)* Retired *Quake* player, Mary Berry (but not Paul Hollywood) is hired to commentate on a *Quake* match at E3, despite previously talking shit about the upcoming reboot on Twitter.

### a game where you can't "die" but every time you lose a life the graphics get shittier

Griffin suggests that the game starts out at "8K *Crysis*-driven honey", but the resolution is halved upon each death; the graphics gradually turn into *Pitfall* and eventually become a single solid square which changes color. Nick suggests that the graphics turn into *Drawn to Death* instead. *(submitted by /u/PikaRae)*

### Age of Umpires

*"The baseball RTS. Build your favorite baseball team, beginning from ancient times" (submitted by /u/greetingsfellowhuman)* Your team starts out playing a very cricket-esque game in Ancient Times, because cricket was the first baseball, and increase in height as they progress through the ages.

## Trivia

* At just 18 minutes and 11 seconds in length, this is the shortest episode of CoolGames Inc to date (including the CoolGames Inc Junior minisodes).
* A plush Eevee sits between Griffin and Nick in the studio.
* At 17:34, Nick hits his own microphone stand with his left hand while "signing off".