Project Hail Mary And Pokopia

A house where “no smells” are allowed sounds like a joke until you’re living it, and that’s exactly where we start. Travis is back with Clayton Gable for a freewheeling catch-up that somehow turns deodorant choices, candle toxins, and the looming reality of teenage-boy funk into a surprisingly relatable opener.

Then we jump to the real headline: Project Hail Mary. Clayton just saw the movie and can’t stop thinking about it, and we dig into why it lands like the kind of sci-fi blockbuster people used to rally around. We talk Andy Weir, the gap between book vs audiobook vs movie, and the very modern problem of attention span, where a podcast can feel effortless but an audiobook suddenly demands “too much brain.” We also get into what makes Ryan Gosling work so well here, and why the story’s tone feels uplifting in a way that invites repeat viewings.

From there it’s pure Operation Game Night Podcast flavor: a passionate debate about movie theater snacks (including the Bunch O Crunch popcorn hack), a quick check on the Mario movie for the kids, and a deep dive into Pokopia, a Switch 2 cozy game that feels like a Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and Minecraft mashup done right. We close with spicy news: Dungeon Crawler Carl is getting a live-action Peacock adaptation, and we’re not sure that’s the best format, but we’re absolutely going to watch. If you like gaming talk, sci-fi hype, and honest friend-to-friend banter, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review with your hottest take.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast. Back and better than ever. Today, I'm joined by the bad boy himself. The fugitive, the man. He's Clayton Gable. It's not Jared. Come on. You're the new bad boy. I yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

I will be the bad boy in Jared's stead, but I pale in comparison to his bad boy antics. And I wear no perfume because my wife watched a documentary about smells, and now smells are forbidden in our house.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

No smelling allowed. Only BO here. Okay, I like that. Nice. Are you uh all natural deodorant type of guy?

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Oh, all natural. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Aluminum free.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Aluminum free. I've never stunk so bad in my life.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

So I had a I had an instructor back in the day that refused to burn candles in their house because of the like toxins that release from the wick or something, like the micro, I don't even know. But yeah, would not burn candles in their house uh because of the stuff that it released into the air. So to each their own, I guess. I am happy to huff candles in the house all day long because I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Louse yourself in perfume.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Yep. I plug a glade outlet air freshener into every single outlet and just make the house smell so good.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Yeah, I've become nose blind to whatever smells are happening in my house, but it's not good.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

I mean, for now, until the boys are like 13, 14 years old, and then it's gonna be like, all right, we gotta we gotta do something here.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah, they're not gonna smell good, I can tell already. I'll all teenage boys stink, but I think mine are gonna be stinkier than most.

Project Hail Mary Movie Glow-Up

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Okay. I get the get the act body spray ready. Yeah, oh god. So today we're going over the fence. Clayton, what's you been up to? Tell me about it.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

I have one thing that's really on my mind lately, Travis, and I'm excited to talk to you about it. Can't wait. Mary and I went out on a little date last weekend. Okay, and you know, we don't do much else, so we went to a movie. Okay, and we saw the newest, hottest thing out there in theaters, Project Hail Mary. Nice. Oh, let me tell you, it has been a while since I went to a movie that just hit that hit like that. You know, like it was just good. I it was heartfelt. I was digging it from start to finish. I started the book a long time ago. I'm uh I am horrible about uh audiobooks. I am the TikTokification of our generation has not passed me by. And my my my grittiness to be able to invest in something long like that just it's always so much easier for me to just turn on a podcast when I'm doing something. Yeah, I don't have to remember things, I don't have to be as mentally engaged with the story. I can just turn on the podcast while I'm walking the dog. Well, I start listening to a book. Now I'm trying to, you know, I feel I feel like I have to focus more. Yeah. When really I just want something dumb in the background to keep me going. So I start a million books. I started Dungeon Crawler Car Carl, like because you said, and I got you know, paid maybe you know, six hours into it, and I liked it a lot. I was I was listening to it on all my walks on car rides, and then just one day it just felt like it was just like too much effort to like listen to the audiobook. And as soon as you make that decision to listen to something else, you've lost it. You've lost it, yeah. And then it's just every subsequent time you choose to listen to something else, it just gets harder to get back into it. So Project Cal Mary, I liked it when I was listening to it, but it was just one of those things that I just stopped listening to and you know was so excited when the movie came out because I can force myself to sit in a theater for two and a half hours and eat candy. Yeah. So have you read the book?

SPEAKER_01 4:27

I have read the book, and I listened to the pod, not the podcast, the audiobook a couple years ago. Audiobook is great, uh, especially once Rocky. I I'm gonna say Rocky just because they already showed it in trailers. If you've seen a trailer for this movie that has gotten you interested in seeing the movie, you know that there's an alien out there. His name's Rocky. Once they introduce Rocky, the audiobook like just goes off the rails and they do the voice for Rocky and stuff. And I really like that. There's some cool sound effects and everything that they add in for production value. I really enjoyed this one. I think this is one of the best by Andy Weir, his others being The Martian and one other that I can't remember. Artemit.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Maybe that's am I thinking of NASA?

SPEAKER_01 5:12

It's the one that just launched. It might be, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

It might be Artemis. I think it's just a coincidence.

The Great Movie Snack Debate

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Sounds familiar. But yeah, I think it's the best by Andy Weir. I think it's great. The story is cool. The ending, take it or leave it. Not sure how they handled that in the movie. I'm excited to see. We wanted to see it this weekend, but did not. So what is that times? What's your go-to like movie snack? What do you what are you eating in the theater?

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Travis, I I hate popcorn. All right. I am not a popcorn guy. Something about eating popcorn just makes me feel gross. Like eating more than like a couple handfuls, just it's yucky. I don't know why. I just don't feel good. Okay. But what does make me feel good is a boatload of candy. So I usually get myself something chocolatey, maybe some bunch of crunch. Okay. And then in this last movie, I got Twizzlers. That was kind of a wild card for me. Normally I'm more like airhead extremes or something, but I like to have a little chocolate and then like whatever the other the chewy type of candy.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

Sour, fruity.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Yeah. And then I just pretty much alternate between those. Okay. Uh every couple minutes, I'm switching between which one I'm eating. And yeah, that gets me through.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

I can get behind that, I guess. Yeah. So what I do is extra yucky then, because I we get some popcorn, a big soda. And we if you take the bunch of crunch and you put it in the popcorn, you get like chocolatey, salty deliciousness, and it's always crunchy. No matter what bite you get, it's always crunchy, either from the popcorn or the bunch of crunch. So you don't lose any out, you don't lose out on any of that like texture. And yeah, it's delicious. And then it like the chocolate kind of slowly like seeps down to the middle or the bottom of the bucket, and then you like reload the top, and then it kind of trickles down as you move the bucket around. So that's our go-to, bunch of crunch and popcorn.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

I think I could maybe try popcorn if I was introduced to the bunch of crunch popcorn method. It's just too much salt and like butter and grease. It just starts to make me feel bad. Don't get me wrong, like the first bite, I'm like, whoo, this is great. Holy cow! But you know, a few few bites in, it's just it's just too much.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Plus, you leave the theater and you have just like popcorn all over you. You're not seeing when you're like throwing it in your face, and then it's like stuck to your you know crotch and it's gross and oily.

Ryan Gosling Carries The Mission

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Yeah. Stuck to my crotch. Mr. Gosling knocked that movie out of the park. Hey oh, I mean, holy cow, he is he killed it. That I mean, I always liked Ryan Gosling, but him in this movie as Dr. Ryland Grace, he just he's so like quirky and witty, and like yeah, you know, he plays he plays the part so well. And you spend a lot of time with Ryan Gosling in this movie, because for those of you who don't know, he essentially is sent on a Hail Mary mission to try and save Earth. There's these things that are eating the sun, it's gonna kill everything, and he has to go out, he's never gonna get to return. But he's on a spaceship by himself trying to figure out how he might be able to save the sun. And obviously, he does then run into an alien named Rocky, and then it just becomes awesome. But yes, it's a lot of Ryan Gosling, and he was up to the task. It was a great film.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Fat Ken does space, and he does it better than anybody.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Yeah, he was great in Barbie, and he's great, he's great in science fiction as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

He's had an incredible run lately. Like he has not had a miss in a while. Ryan Gosling's been in so many like good things that have just hit.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Yeah.

unknown 9:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Mala Land, Barbie, this, what's that? Not Nightcrawler. The driver. Driver. Driver. Yeah, driver. He's had some good ones. Place Beyond the Pines, not my favorite, but remember the Titans. Remember the Titans. Yeah. He's the what the quarterback.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Was he Sunshine or something?

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Sunshine. Yeah. He's so good. Man, he's so good.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Oh man, I wish you, I wish you had gone to see it so we could really get into it about it.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

I know. Maybe next week, because I'm we're we might play hooky one afternoon and go see it before we go pick up Gwen.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

We don't do that enough. Like we don't take advantage of this, our schedule as much as we should. So we're trying to convince it.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

It's never gonna be like that again.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Yeah, to go uh sneak out and go see a movie in the middle of the day. Yeah. Anything else?

Kids And The Mario Movie Question

SPEAKER_00 9:58

No, that's basically the main thing. I love the movie. I have I can't wait to see it again. I've been telling everybody to go see that movie because it felt like there was a time when going to the movies, there was like always a good blockbuster hit out there like that that just everybody went to see. It was like everybody was talking about the same thing. It was awesome. And this is the first time I've kind of felt that feeling in a long time that like this is just the movie that everybody has to see, like it's for everybody. Yeah, you know, it's not dark, it's kind of uplifting, maybe to a fault, some people might say. But anyway, yeah, I I've just been really enjoying talking to people about this and telling people to go see it and recommending it constantly.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

How are the boys feeling about the Mario movie? Have we taken an informal poll to see where their lines are drawn on the Mario movie?

SPEAKER_00 10:52

What do you mean their lines are drawn?

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Like, are they like wanting to go see it?

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Oh, yeah, they want to go see it. Yeah, we thought about going to see this weekend, but we got into some other stuff instead. But we'll definitely go check that one out while it's in theaters.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Yeah, I'm I'm curious once they go see it, if they know half the characters that are in it. Because at this point they're like doing these big reveals about all these other characters that are going to be in it. And I'm curious to know. They're pulling some deep cuts, and I want to know if the boys, like half the movie, are staring at the screen going, who the heck is that?

SPEAKER_00 11:26

They won't know. They won't know if they're not in Mario Kart, they won't know.

unknown 11:33

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Okay. We'll have to follow up. I won't I'm curious once they once they go see it. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

What have you been doing, man?

Pokopia Hands-On Cozy Game Breakdown

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Well, speaking of Nintendo, I have been playing a game called Pocopia. Pocopia. That is Pokemon, Utopia, mashed into one word. They said it on a live stream one time that it was Poc Pocopia. Pock Pocopia? They said it was some weird, I don't know. Pocopia, Pokemon, and it is awesome. It is like the Stardew Valley kind of Animal Crossing Minecraft mashup with Pokemon that we have always wanted. And we talked a while ago about how there's like this kind of dead space out there where like people stopped caring about cozy games, at least cozy video games, after COVID. And you know, Animal Crossing was the biggest thing in the world. Every single person that had never played a video game was out there playing Animal Crossing, and everybody was all in. Then there was kind of this lull. This game hits in a hard way. We talked about cozy stickerville the other day. This is like cozy stickerville, the Pokemon video game. It is on Switch 2. You play as a ditto. Are you familiar with Pokemon first off? Yeah, I'm your Pokemon guy.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

I'm a I I'm not at your level. Okay. Last week I got a little embarrassed when I spell like Batman, and then you proceeded to ask me like two follow-up questions that I had no idea about. So I played all the Pokemon games when I was, you know, 10 through 17.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Like I was familiar with like starting 150 Pokemon, like original red, blue, yellow.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

So this game is you wake up from a dream or whatever it is, you're playing as a Ditto. Familiar with Ditto. Yeah. His power is to transform into other Pokemon.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

He transforms into his previous trainer, his or her previous trainer, which is a boy or a girl, and he still has like the weird little black dot Ditto eyes, not like big Pokemon like animated features. And he goes around this island with Professor Tangrowth, which is a Pokemon that came later on, evolution of Tangala, and they are trying to bring Pokemon back to the island. And the first one you come across is Squirtle. Squirtle's laying there and he's like dried out. He's like, Oh, it's so dry, I need water. And so you have to find a way to bring water to Squirtle. And then Squirtle's like, here, let me tell you, teach you how to do my move water gun. So then you can like squirt water on trees, bushes, plants, crops, whatever. So then you grow enough grass or whatever, and Bulbazore shows up, and then Charmander shows up, and then Scyther shows up, and like you just continue this like next carrot type mentality to like get this thing going. And all of a sudden, you have all these things in your toolbox that you can do. You can basically terraform this entire island, and the whole thing is you're completing challenges and bringing more Pokemon to the island that can allow you to do more things. It's freaking awesome! And it's like that loop is so good, man. They just keep you on that treadmill for so long. Eventually, you can like put the Pokemon to work. So, like you get Hitmonchan, the fighting Pokemon, and you're like, Hey, punch this building for me for 30 minutes, and then like there will be a building there. And you can tell the Pokemon, like, hey, you want to live in this building? And they'll just like move in. What? It's like it's a sandboxy game, it's super weird. But if you're into those like relaxing, low stress games like this where you're just kind of building your world, this is an excellent one of those. It's on track to be like the fastest selling Pokemon game ever, the fastest selling Switch 2 release title, switch two title. They've sold like six million copies already in the first, I don't know, two weeks, something crazy. So yeah, Poke Copia is what I wanted to talk about today. That's the main thing.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

That's it. I gotta get a switch two.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

It's you know, I think this year will be really telling for the Switch 2. They had the new Mario Kart, Mario Kart World, which was kind of uh met with mixed reception. I think this year is gonna be a big year for Switch 2, and I think you'll have some big releases that are gonna come out that the boys might be interested in. So yeah. I wouldn't go out and run to buy one right now, specifically for Pokopia, but I think this year might pad its stats a little bit, and you might be able to hop on later and take advantage of some deals and stuff later on. I dig it, I dig it.

Dungeon Crawler Carl TV Show News

SPEAKER_00 16:21

What else you got, man?

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Well one more quick thing. I talked about Dungeon Crawler Carl, and I'm so glad that you brought it up. I'm on like book seven, listening to the audiobooks, still loving them, but took a bit of a break because my brain can't handle that much Dungeon Crawler Carl all at once, and I kind of binged it for no real reason, other than I was traveling. But I did that solo episode where I talked about Dungeon Crawler Carl, and I said they will make this into a TV show. And just this week it was released that they are doing a TV show, and I forgot who's doing it to fill some air. Give me a second. It just released at Peacock. Yeah, it's a live action show on Peacock for Dungeon Crawler Carl adaptation. I don't know how I feel about this. I think it would have been better as like an adult animation. That's how I pictured it in my head. I don't know if they can keep people signed on for like seven plus eight seasons, plus ten seasons, however long it goes. I really wish that they would have gone a different direction, but I'm curious to see how it turns out, and I will definitely tune in when it comes out.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Once it releases sometime.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

That's a good question. I mean, they like just sign the rights to it, so I it'll be like a year or two. It's gonna it's gonna be a while.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Okay.

Wrap-Up Over The Fence

SPEAKER_01 17:50

But anyways, I I think that's all I had.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Okay, well, you keep you keep freezing up on my screen, so it's probably a good sign that we should just crawl back over this fence.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Let's go dungeon crawl our way over and go have Squirtle, you know, water some bushes for us. Yeah, sounds great. Love it. All right. Well, this has drawn on too long, but this is Operation Game Night. I have been Travis, he has been Clayton. We have been over the fence and we are out of the way.