ToeJam & Earl

And a huge thank you to the crew who keeps me on track every week, Zach Wiz, who makes sure I don't wander too far off into the gaming weeds, and Kelly Winters, who's helping to expand this podcast beyond just audio.

Later in the show, for Halloween, I sat down with Greg Johnson, the iconic director of the ToeJam & Earl and other long-lasting series of games.

He has a new game out that's telling a touching story of a ghost and her friend using Thai cultural aspects along with Buddhism and Muslim teachings on how to deal with grief.

These two

While on a trip to Thailand visiting family with his wife, they took time to talk to me about their new game, Dancing with Ghosts, and how it's a story on how to deal with grief.

Hi, I'm Greg Johnson, a longtime game developer started back in the early 80s with Starflight as my very first game released in 1986.

I've been making games as an indie developer ever since then games like ToeJam and Earl all Five of them, you know, your ToeJam & Roll series and Doki Doki Universe, Kimono Cats most recently.

And right now I am working on a indie game called Dancing with Ghosts, the most meaningful and important game I've made in my 43 year career as an indie developer.

I'm blanking on the thing.

ToeJam & Earl version where you have to find the pieces of the Sonic transducer to return to Transylvania.

Ooh, that'd be good.

You play as Riff Raff in the background with everything going on all around you.

New

ToeJam & Earl came out.

Yeah.

I was like, dude, I love ToeJam & Earl.

That was a good game, though.

Yeah.

Came out of nowhere.

nowhere.Is this like Ratchet & Clank, ToeJam & Earl?

Yeah, no, it's-

It's just a-

So what it came down to was, like, describing the experience.

I didn't wanna just say, like, "Put Toejam & Earl in Diablo," because that might mean any number of things to an AI.

Yeah.

It might mean just changing the title graphics or, uh, you know, changing an enemy to look like Earl, but he's just standing there.

And so I chose, like, a digestible piece, which is I wanted to see Earl from Toejam & Earl, uh, as a playable character walking around and shooting tomatoes or throwing tomatoes at a skeleton in the dungeon, and the, and the skeleton could react.

Yes.

That was it.

There was a website called The Spriters Resource and The Sounds Resource-