More Games That Save the Best for Last

0:00 This is a video about spoilers.

0:02 It is about the last levels of games,

0:05 the things they do just before the credits.

0:08 This is a weird thing to make a video about, I understand.

0:12 These are the parts you withhold— you save for the 40th minute of the video,

0:17 and you put big gates around them,

0:19 and you say “skip it if you want to save it for yourself!!” But sometimes,

0:23 like in the cases here,

0:25 to tell you what makes the game special, I need to tell you about the ending.

0:31 I fear you will underestimate these projects otherwise.

0:34 So here’s the deal: I’m going to tell you about three video game endings today.

0:39 They are the endings of a first person shooter,

0:43 a narrative-heavy walking simulator, and a rhythm game.

0:46 I do not believe that knowing the endings to these games will,

0:51 actually, spoil you.

0:52 I will be revealing mechanics and narrative

0:55 beats you wouldn’t otherwise know about, yes.

0:57 But I have replayed all of these games

1:00 multiple times for the writing of this video,

1:02 and my enjoyment of their endings has not diminished ONE BIT,

1:06 even though I know what’s coming.

1:09 But, for the completionists among you, none of these games cost more than $25,

1:14 and all of their credits can be reached within, let’s say, seven-ish hours.

1:18 For your convenience, I have also timestamped this video for both the general

1:24 discussions and the specifically spoilery parts of each game.

1:27 You do what you wish, but there’s almost nothing I’d rather do

1:32 than tell you about how these games end.

1:36 Let’s go.

1:41 Although most categories of gaming are

1:44 going through some level of indie domination,

1:46 first-person-shooters still feel like a genre largely defined by AAA efforts.

1:51 It’s a field sculpted by Call of Duty, Battlefield,

1:55 and whichever hero shooter is currently allowed to succeed.

1:58 Indie efforts have instead mostly focused

2:01 on the throwback “boomer shooter” subgenre, defined by fun, crunchy aesthetics,

2:06 crafty level design, superfast movement,

2:08 and the ability to hold more than two guns at the same time.

2:13 Technically, Echo Point Nova, a 2024 shooter from Greylock Studio,

2:18 has many of these defining attributes.

2:20 You move fast as hell.

2:22 Levels eschew any sense of realism in favor of absurd, awesome, verticality.

2:27 You’re carrying roughly 200 pounds of guns at any given time.

2:31 But Echo Point Nova has never felt like it firmly fit

2:35 into the Boomer Shooter category for me— it is simply its own thing,

2:40 so absolutely chock-full of ideas that its mechanics

2:43 are able to combine in completely new ways.

2:47 And, as you might have guessed, it ends with the coolest s**t I’ve ever seen.

2:53 Echo Point Nova also starts pretty delightfully,

2:56 by dispelling the notion that you can ever

2:59 have Too Many Mechanics in a video game.

3:01 In the first three minutes of play, you receive in sequence: a revolver,

3:06 a double jump, an SMG, a ground pound (and a coinciding lack of fall damage),

3:11 the knowledge that you might have to lead your shots,

3:14 a pickaxe and the information that the entire environment is destructible,

3:18 a HOVERBOARD that can not only cover land incredibly quickly

3:22 but can wallride and in fact fly straight up sheer walls,

3:26 a grenade which is a grenade,

3:28 a shotgun which is a shotgun, and a grappling hook that you can use on any wall,

3:33 enemies, or in fact the CLOUDS IN THE SKY.

3:36 YOU CAN GRAPPLE THE CLOUDS.

3:38 First three minutes of the game.

3:40 Echo Point Nova takes a maximalist approach to most aspects of its design.

3:46 The game is actually an open-world arena-shooter,

3:48 in which you blast dudes across dozens of different

3:52 levels scattered across a massive floating sky world.

3:55 After each of these arenas, you will find a new weapon or perk or other bonus,

4:00 which will allow you to, say, regain health by ramming guys with your hoverboard

4:04 or do triple damage after bouncing off a jump pad.

4:08 Weapons can earn new attachments, too.

4:09 There’s a lot going on.

4:11 By the mid-game, battles will take place almost entirely airborne.

4:14 You will careen over hoards of bad guys,

4:17 showering them with grenade launchers and shotgun blasts,

4:20 perhaps backflipping— because yes,

4:22 if you aim high enough you will simply backflip— and slowing

4:25 down time to pop a dude with a sniper rifle.

4:27 Oh you can slow down time, too.

4:30 That’s a mechanic I forgot.

4:32 You can slow down time.

4:34 What’s kind of miraculous about Echo Point Nova

4:37 is that this tool kit quickly stops being overwhelming,

4:40 that your brain just kind of adjusts to the 30

4:43 options you have in your back pocket at all times.

4:46 This is maybe exemplified by the game’s approach to boss design,

4:50 which combines Shadow of the Colossus, the Star Wars trench run,

4:53 and that scene in the beginning of Saints Row 3

4:56 where you skydive through the length of a cargo plane.

4:58 You have to match your momentum against these giant soaring fortresses,

5:02 taking out both enemies and the fortress’s

5:05 weak points as it disintegrates around you.

5:08 I want to say: I am aware that this game

5:11 is probably hard to visually parse on YouTube.

5:14 When recording footage, I often try to play a little slower to make

5:18 it more comprehensible to the audience— that’s just impossible here.

5:22 Echo Point Nova is chaos, and you find your way to fit into that chaos.

5:28 My favorite bit of the game isn’t

5:30 even combat though— it’s simply navigating the world.

5:33 Because each arena is held on different floating islands,

5:37 getting between them is a sort-of improvisational platforming puzzle.

5:41 You can launch off a ramp, wall-ride some floating arcs,

5:45 dig your way through a landmass, whatever you want.

5:48 As the game goes on and you collect more agility orbs— yes,

5:53 there are agility orbs— your abilities expand to hyperbolic levels.

5:57 With launch pads, triple jumps, and cloud grappels,

6:00 almost anywhere on the map feels accessible from everywhere else.

6:04 For all the other collected abilities in Echo Point Nova, you cannot fly.

6:09 But with your speed and maneuverability, you can do everything but.

6:15 So.

6:16 The ending.

6:17 Throughout the game,

6:18 you’ve been collecting “artifacts” for thus-far unknown reasons.

6:22 You just jump into a volcano or an icicle or something and find an artifact.

6:26 But eventually you find every artifact and place

6:29 them on nice little pedestals and as you do,

6:33 giant structures start flying out of the cloud-sea beneath you.

6:37 A final obstacle course,

6:38 for the player who’s proved they can do almost anything.

6:42 The start of this obstacle course is pure speed.

6:46 You rocket around curves and off of ramps, climbing ever higher.

6:50 This new environment in the sky pays

6:52 tribute to the one you’ve been playing through,

6:54 starting with the simple dirt of the tutorials, giving way to massive trees,

6:59 then— I had almost reached the mesa section

7:03 of the obstacle course when I realized two things.

7:07 One: I was up really high.

7:10 Obscenely high.

7:11 So high I could see the open world of the rest of the game.

7:15 So high I could, in fact, see the curvature of the planet.

7:19 And two: I couldn’t quite reach the next geometry.

7:23 There was a jump pad, but it wasn’t sending me high enough,

7:28 my grappling hook couldn’t quite grab the next piece of land.

7:31 I thought through my toolkit.

7:33 I had the surfboard, the grapple, the triple jump.

7:36 I had received a handful more upgrades: a jump pad, an ice cast,

7:40 a sort of fiery vortex that could propel me through terrain.

7:44 None of these could bring me high enough,

7:47 unless… As I climbed the obstacle course,

7:49 in the back of my mind, I had noticed the physics of the game shifting.

7:53 There were massive jumps that I shouldn’t have made but I did— in fact,

7:58 sometimes I was soaring so far I overshot my targets.

8:02 I was so high up… was it possible that gravity itself had reduced?

8:07 On the ground, my little fire vortex power only propelled me a few feet.

8:13 Here though… I tried it.

8:16 It was like I had kicked off a rocket engine.

8:20 I flew, actually flew, through the lessened gravity.

8:24 The ascent only grew more extreme, but now I had cracked it.

8:28 Giant icicles hung in the atmosphere and I surfed straight up them,

8:32 magma-covered rocks floated in the vacuum and I barely touched a one.

8:37 Echo Point Nova had finally let go of its last restraint.

8:42 Up above the planet, ultimate freedom.

8:45 There is, of course, a last battle up here.

8:48 Hanging above the planet is some sort of hostile space station.

8:51 But gravity was the true final boss of the game and I had already defeated it.

8:57 The station barely stood a chance— I screamed through its structure,

9:02 melted its walls, exploded its reactors.

9:04 Its defenses were tied to a limitation I had left behind.

9:10 Eventually there was only one weak point of the station left, right at its base.

9:15 I careened into the final room and detonated it

9:17 with the same fire vortex that propelled me forward.

9:21 The entire fortress disintegrated.

9:23 I stared, instead, at the arc of the planet itself.

9:28 The title of the game came up.

9:32 And slowly, slowly, I fell back down to earth.

9:37 Exhale, I think the game is saying with these credits.

9:41 You have reached the pinnacle.

9:43 Nothing else we can show you could be a higher high than the thing you just did.

9:51 The game is right.

9:54 Another approach to storytelling is, rather than an ascent,

9:57 to set the entire narrative at the peak.

10:00 This, in a sense, is what Despelote does.

10:04 Despelote is not a game with an smg, grapple hook,

10:08 or hoverboard— it is a quiet snapshot of the developer’s early childhood,

10:13 complete with mischief, boring school days, and annoying little sisters.

10:17 Why, then, is the narrative set at the peak?

10:20 Because the entire game is centered around Ecuador’s 2001 run in the playoffs

10:26 for the World Cup— the first time ever

10:29 that the country actually qualified for the tournament.

10:33 The excitement of this moment is stretched out across the entire game.

10:37 It is the subject of every overheard conversation.

10:39 A giant TV is hauled into the middle of a wedding party because,

10:44 if not, everyone would have bailed to watch the playoffs.

10:48 At breakfast, your thoughts drift from your eggs into an empty field,

10:55 where you can kick the ball for miles.

10:59 Despelote’s aesthetic plays into this obsession.

11:01 The environments are constructed from a— I almost

11:05 want to say a gameboy camera level of detail,

11:08 blurry dual-tone captures of realistic places.

11:11 But the ball pops, brilliantly white and hand-drawn,

11:14 just like your own hands and legs,

11:17 far more vibrant than anything happening around it.

11:20 A dumpster may be blurry,

11:22 but the cone you’re trying to kick off of it is crystal clear.

11:26 Despelote is a memoir through the eyes of a Julian,

11:30 the developer, and so it’s easy to intuit that the bright,

11:33 hand-drawn items and characters are the things

11:36 that remain most accessible in his memory.

11:38 Your transformer toys,

11:40 the old man who yells at you in the park, your mom and dad.

11:43 These are the things that stand out from the haze.

11:46 There’s a real commitment to the feeling of the kid experience.

11:50 In school, Julian’s gaze is inevitably drawn from his work to the window.

11:55 Around grown-ups, you only catch snippets of their conversation—

11:58 either because they’re talking about subjects over your head,

12:01 or because you’re just not interested.

12:03 You draw on the fogged up window on the way home.

12:08 The city and the era, and the perspective through which they’re rendered,

12:11 are so transportive you may forget that this is a story told in retrospect.

12:15 Especially for me, an American with no

12:18 pre-existing knowledge of World Cup history,

12:20 the anticipation is wonderful— what is going to happen?

12:23 Will Ecuador qualify?

12:25 Will they win?

12:26 But as you draw closer to the climactic day,

12:31 the timeline gets shakier, less sure of itself.

12:34 During one sequence,

12:35 you’re walking around a house party with teens, getting drunk.

12:39 This couldn’t be the same year as that world cup, could it?

12:42 the same year we had transformer toys

12:44 and played hide and seek with our kid sister?

12:47 Even more surreal is your video game, Tino Tini’s Soccer 99,

12:51 which is usually just a top-down SNES-style minigame.

12:54 But towards the end of Despelote— as you ignore your sister and your mom

12:59 begs you to just communicate with her— Tino Tini’s Soccer 99 changes.

13:06 Or, it doesn’t end.

13:07 The ref blows the whistle, the teams line up and shake hands,

13:11 and the game should shut down.

13:13 But it keeps playing.

13:14 You, as the player, walk out of the stadium.

13:18 You walk into the streets of Quito,

13:20 still recognizable despite being seen from above.

13:25 You walk into the protagonist’s house.

13:28 It’s a surreal, borderline unnerving sequence,

13:31 not just because the Tino Tini’s Soccer 99 cartridge seems haunted,

13:36 but because the broader game— Despelote— has been

13:39 presenting itself thus far as a fairly straightforward history.

13:44 Why this, then?

13:46 What’s going on?

13:48 The answer comes in the sequence I really want to talk about,

13:51 the ending…anticlimax.

13:53 Following Tino Tini’s reality breakdown,

13:55 you’re thrown back into one of the scenes

13:58 the game started with: sitting in a classroom, longingly staring out the window.

14:02 But you’re given additional context this time.

14:04 Julian confesses that he wishes he could remember the final,

14:08 explosive day of the playoffs better— that he was only

14:12 4 when Ecuador beat Uruguay and qualified for the world cup.

14:16 That he has, in fact, aged the character you’re playing up to eight years old,

14:20 so this story makes a little more sense.

14:23 It’s a disarming confession given how genuine the game feels,

14:27 one you sit with as you halfheartedly circle answers on your school quiz.

14:31 But then you’re released from school and sprint down the stairs,

14:34 eager to do the one thing you absolutely know how to do,

14:38 kick the s**t out of that ball.

14:41 And then when you do— If you pause

14:45 and look around this new version of the world,

14:47 it’s quickly apparent that this is a pretty messy,

14:51 google earth-y scan of the environment.

14:53 But that isn’t what it feels like.

14:56 After spending so much time in gameboy camera land,

14:59 kicking this ball and being thrust into full,

15:02 blinding color feels like— well it feels

15:05 like you’ve just entered the real world.

15:08 Which is the point.

15:10 Julian is no longer 4, or 8.

15:12 This is Quito as it currently exists,

15:14 not as a memory, but as an unsentimental simulation.

15:19 And it’s tough.

15:20 It’s unfamiliar.

15:21 Though the game isn’t long, we’ve gotten to know Julian’s block,

15:26 the park and surrounding buildings,

15:27 and then this— this reality— is intensely unfamiliar.

15:31 It just stretches on and on, the cars melting into the pavement,

15:36 the stadium melding with the ground in the uncanny capture.

15:41 Julian says that this is a scan of the park they made in 2024.

15:46 Yes, he says, it changed a lot after that world cup playoff.

15:50 But the physical changes pale in comparison to the changes in him,

15:54 the peril of trying to recreate something that’s

15:57 passed from memory to myth in his head.

16:00 He shares that he wanted to perfectly capture

16:03 the ambiance of the park to put into the game,

16:06 so they brought Despelote’s sound designer to record.

16:09 But when they arrived, people told them it was dangerous to go

16:14 into the park with all that expensive sound equipment.

16:17 They had to hire a security guard to follow

16:20 them around the place he remembered sprinting through so freely.

16:24 Any piece of art set in the past is, of course, a facsimile.

16:28 No number of details can perfectly replicate what it was really like,

16:33 much less how an individual really felt.

16:36 But Despelote makes that part of its text in a dizzying way;

16:39 a full-on collision with the abstractions of its depiction.

16:43 Even the most genuine parts of the game exist in this limbo.

16:48 Julian’s in-game parents are voiced by his actual parents,

16:51 their dialogue almost fully improvised based on their memories of the time.

16:56 But Julian’s parents, in the present,

16:58 are divorced— in recording them for the game,

17:02 he recreated another layer of the past that no longer exists.

17:08 As we continue to wander through the bizarre geometry of the “real

17:12 world,” Julian returns to the topic of the world cup playoffs.

17:16 He says that they tried every way of depicting the moment Ecuador

17:19 qualified in-game and nothing could properly

17:22 match the ecstasy of the real thing.

17:25 So, he concludes, why not just watch it yourself.

17:29 Watch it as it aired on Ecuadorian TV—

17:32 with an ad running right through the middle of it.

17:36 Reality, once again, attempts to puncture the myth.

17:42 But nothing can take away from this moment.

17:49 Ecuador would lose the world cup proper in the first round.

17:55 That’s not as important as what happens here.

17:59 Our lives are made out of this conflict,

18:01 our memories melting and reforming into the Grand

18:04 and Meaningful pillars of our personal narratives.

18:07 Our pasts are stories we tell ourselves.

18:10 But why shouldn’t we share those stories with each other?

18:18 Have you ever learned about a game only after it’s released,

18:21 then taken a look back at its development cycle and gone “oh wow there’s

18:26 a lot of baggage here?” This is what happened to me with Rhythm Doctor,

18:31 a— I thought— cute and straightforward

18:33 rhythm game from developer 7th Beat Games.

18:36 Rhythm Doctor’s whole schtick is that all gameplay happens with a single button.

18:41 You’re not playing chords, you’re not steering around a track,

18:44 you’re not aiming and shooting.

18:46 You’re literally just hitting one button on the correct beat.

18:50 Rhythm Doctor’s most direct influence

18:52 is probably Nintendo’s “Rhythm Heaven” series,

18:54 in which you play cute little microgames in time with the beat.

18:59 Pluck hairs from these guy’s beards!

19:01 Help the karate man punch stuff!

19:03 Rhythm Doctor’s twist on this formula, I believed,

19:07 was contextualizing it within a more cohesive environment.

19:10 You’re not just a pair of tweezers or a karate man,

19:13 you’re an intern at a hospital,

19:15 testing out a new form of “rhythm therapy,” where you’re

19:19 literally defibrillating the patient’s heart on beat with the song.

19:23 Oh fun, I thought, I bet there will be recurring patients,

19:26 we’ll get little stories with them,

19:28 maybe the medical issues will get worse or more “out there” as the game goes on.

19:32 All these assumptions were correct, this does happen in the game.

19:37 And then I looked at when this game started development,

19:40 and it was in two thousand and eleven as a flash game,

19:43 and then it entered Steam Greenlight in two thousand and seventeen,

19:47 and then entered early access in two thousand and twenty

19:50 one and then it only fully released a FEW MONTHS AGO, in December of 2025!!

19:56 That’s fourteen years for this little thing!

19:58 What could it possibly have up its sleeve

20:01 to warrant a Duke Nukem Forever development time?

20:04 (I know this isn’t really how game development works,

20:07 just let me frame it this way for dramatic

20:11 effect) Rhythm Doctor sets you up with a single,

20:14 very simple task: press the button on the seventh beat.

20:17 Seventh beat of this samurai, seventh beat of this lovesick kid,

20:22 seventh beat of the samurai and the lovesick kid,

20:26 ooh, interesting, asking you to track

20:28 a couple different rhythms at the same time.

20:30 But still: cute.

20:31 It was only when I got to the boss of the first

20:35 world that I caught a glimpse of what Rhythm Doctor would become.

20:41 See, this “battleworn insomniac” is experiencing a particular kind of virus:

20:47 “Connectifia Abortus,” or uhh, wifi trouble.

20:51 You’re not told exactly what this means—

20:54 the doctors just repeat the instructions

20:55 of the first couple stages— hit the button on the seventh beat, no matter what.

21:00 Which it turns out sometimes looks like this, and more often looks like:

21:13 From here on, I was fully locked in.

21:15 Rhythm games have maybe the most rigid rules

21:17 of any gaming genre— you don’t make choices,

21:19 you don’t express agency, you just hit the notes at the right time.

21:23 For the game to understand that and warp itself around your agency,

21:27 almost mocking your rigidity by making everything else so

21:31 chaotic… it just speaks to what I love about games,

21:35 storytelling by means you’ve never really seen before.

21:38 And I think Rhythm Doctor somehow heard me think that, and laughed,

21:42 and said “hold my beer.” It was during the second boss of the game that I

21:48 realized Rhythm Doctor was going to do things I'd never seen a game do before.

21:53 But it didn’t start positively.

21:54 As soon as I jumped into the boss arena,

21:57 some weird glitch happened and the game jumped from fullscreen to windowed,

22:01 and it refused to go back.

22:03 For some reason, this issue still plagues modern gaming— if I had

22:07 a nickel for every game that booted up on the wrong monitor,

22:10 or changed resolution and rearranged the whole screen,

22:12 or froze my screen while attempting to change from one mode to another.

22:15 I mean whatever.

22:16 I’ll play the game like this.

22:19 And then, around 40 seconds into the boss, something starts happening.

22:25 The character, this DJ, has been bobbing up and down in the window,

22:30 but then the window starts bobbing up and down on my desktop.

22:36 It’s— it’s moving itself around.

22:38 Slowly at first, and then as the beat picks up, frantically, uncontrollably.

22:52 It’s bouncing around the edges.

22:54 It cannot be contained.

22:55 At one point, the DJ starts running from one

22:59 location to another and the window is following him,

23:01 I can’t properly capture this so I just have to show you a video,

23:05 over both my monitors.

23:07 I just, like.

23:08 I didn’t know a game could do this.

23:21 I’ve seen a game shut itself down.

23:23 I’ve seen a game fake glitches or notifications.

23:25 But this is more than pulling a trick— this is a new way of communicating!

23:32 I need to move this script towards the end

23:34 of this game or I will talk about it forever.

23:37 So, Rhythm Doctor has shown its hand.

23:40 It can do window magic.

23:42 It deploys this carefully.

23:44 Not all bosses use it, many have other dazzling tricks.

23:46 But as I’m coming to the end of the game,

23:49 I kind of can’t imagine what else it’s been holding back— how

23:53 is it going to pull another rabbit out of the same hat?

23:56 As the last level begins, we learn that the entire hospital is destabilizing—

24:02 the wifi virus has come back with a vengeance, it’s attacking everyone at once.

24:07 As a player, you start doing what you’ve

24:09 done before— balancing multiple rhythms at the same time,

24:12 the Samurai and the Boy, the DJ and the doctors.

24:15 And it takes a minute to realize what’s different,

24:19 that the windows aren’t just moving around but duplicating.

24:22 It’s two boss fights at once.

24:24 It’s four patients over two windows.

24:26 It’s two patients and six birds.

24:28 It’s 8, it’s 10, it’s 14 heartbeats at once spread across four windows,

24:34 an impossible task, the rhythms too disparate,

24:37 too disjointed to ever keep up with.

24:40 Inevitably, you will fail.

24:42 The windows all flatline.

24:44 And then, when all hope is lost the DJ

24:48 shows up and says he’s just finished his new track.

25:04 He has somehow made a track that syncs up everyone’s heartbeat.

25:08 But lest you think this is the end of the level— ohhhh no,

25:13 things have just begun.

25:15 During my time playing Rhythm Doctor,

25:17 I’ve been searching for why exactly I find its window-trick so compelling.

25:21 I have seen much more expensive games do much

25:25 more technically impressive things with animation and camera moves.

25:28 But these screens of Rhythm Doctor dancing in front

25:31 of me gives me a feeling far beyond those titles.

25:35 And it’s in the final boss that I realize, yes, it is a performance.

25:40 When I play other games, I am participating in animation.

25:43 But here, I’m part of choreography.

25:46 The program itself has learned to dance.

26:08 Over the next several minutes,

26:09 what Rhythm Doctor does not only justifies its development time,

26:13 it makes me wonder how the game only took this long to release.

26:18 Every plot thread comes back through, every rhythm is woven into this tapestry,

26:22 and the choreography just gets more and more complex.

26:26 I can’t even keep up here— at one point,

26:29 two doctors are trapped in separate windows,

26:30 and so the samurai shows up and smashes the screens into each other.

26:34 At another point, the lovesick kid jumps from his window into his crush’s.

26:38 At one point— and I need to slow

26:40 down here so you really understand— at one point,

26:44 the window the DJ is playing in fully disappears and just him,

26:48 just his sprite, plummets downward towards

26:51 the bottom of your desktop and your HAND,

26:54 the one that’s just been pressing a single

26:57 button the whole time reaches out to CATCH HIM.

26:59 And then he whips out an electric guitar

27:01 and the windows are flying across the screen

27:03 and fireworks are exploding on your desktop and it’s

27:07 just the greatest f******g thing I’ve ever seen.

27:10 In the prior video in this— is it a series?

27:13 I guess it’s a series— I said that it’s a risky prospect

27:17 to save the very best in your game for the very end.

27:21 Everyone plays the first level, but most players don’t finish most games.

27:25 What if all your efforts for this grand finale go completely unseen?

27:30 But for those players who do, who are driven to finish,

27:34 to see it all, it’s hard to imagine a more generous gift from a game.

27:39 A great first level ensures that I’ll play the next one.

27:43 A great last level, that’s what guarantees I won’t forget it.

27:47 That’s how a game lives forever.

27:53 While writing this video, I’ve been thinking a lot about how games define rules,

27:58 how they communicate those rules to the player,

28:00 and then— most importantly— how they break them.

28:03 All three endings here contain some level of rule-breaking.

28:06 But these are not the only games that have broken the rules, not by far.

28:11 OVER ON NEBULA, because this is a promotion for Nebula,

28:15 I’ve made an exclusive video about three other games that do

28:18 tricks that I didn’t know you could do in games.

28:22 These pull off their tricks in the middle of the game,

28:24 rather than at the end, so they’re a little out of topic for this video.

28:27 But they are so CLEVER,

28:29 so encapsulating of “how has no one thought of this before”

28:33 that I couldn’t keep myself from talking about them.

28:35 Two of these games do a trick I think everyone should copy— one does

28:39 a trick that I think no one should ever do again (but in a positive way).

28:43 I had a lot of fun making it.

28:46 Nebula is a premium streaming service where I get to do stuff like this, videos

28:50 that I want to make that don’t exactly

28:52 fit the size or algorithmic needs of YouTube.

28:55 This most recent video actually features a ton of licensed music,

28:59 which is obviously a no-go here.

29:01 In just the past couple months I’ve also made video essays,

29:04 discussions with other creators, best-of-lists,

29:07 cooking videos, a needlessly in-depth chronicle of my mission

29:10 to get a blu-ray of the movie Sunshine.

29:12 It’s great, it’s goofy, and it’s only— ONLY— $2.50 a month with my URL.

29:18 I’ve been spending more and more time on Nebula recently.

29:22 Largely, that’s because of F.D.

29:24 Signifier’s incredible video on Tyler Perry,

29:27 which exists in its full, non-copyright-censored form on Nebula.

29:30 I’m also having a blast with Razbuten’s

29:33 2 hour chat with IronPineapple and Yakko,

29:35 which, you guessed it, is only available on Nebula.

29:39 And when I’m on Nebula, I think, wow, this is great.

29:42 I never have to skip ads, I know my money is going to support those creators,

29:47 I never wonder “is this a real video or just

29:50 some rat king of AI fake voice bull beep beeeeeeep”.

29:55 It’s a good place, is my point.

29:59 And you can spend time there too,

30:04 by following my link and signing up for under three bucks a month.