Go to sleep with Daniel and his audio-only adventures
August 20, 2024 8:39 PM Subscribe
The pioneer of the audio Lets Play (Lets Plays being a documented journey, originally via screenshots and now, mostly, via video of an experience playing a video game), Daniel K, "a multi-disciplinary artist, teacher and former swimming pool maintenance guy now living in Midland, Western Australia," is recording a an audio Lets Play of 2013's Digimon Adventure for his son to use as his bedtime listening. It is sweet, comforting, emotional, and incredible personal.
Daniel K has made audio Lets Plays for a whole bunch of games from Pikmin to Pokemon to Eurotruck Simulator to various itch.io indie games and more aside. He's credited by the creators of the popular (in relative terms) No One Can Know About This (a Final Fantasy audio lets paly series) as their inspiration. He's also made podcast series about reviewing Flavoured Milk called, fittingly, Milkin' It.
Yet it his most recent series, Digimon for Sleep, that I think is the most special. He records each episode nominally for his son to listen to when he's having trouble sleeping; each episode is, however, as much about the digressions and the expanding Daniel K lore as it is about playing through the game itself.
The episodes are often recorded in various places around Perth, with ambient audio included sometimes, and feature digressions about the definitions of isthmus as opposed to other types of land/water interactions, k-pop observations, musings on various animal calls, and dialogues between Daniel K and "editor Dan". He is a man with both incredible love for his kid and a breadth of interests almost the size of the observable universe.
There's this delightful tension between the obvious effort he puts into creating these and also how organic and crunchy they feel. In an era where podcasts are becoming increasingly slick and, in some ways, generic, listening to a new episode of this series is always an unexpected adventure. It's something that on paper sounds like it shouldn't work, but there's real magic to be found.
Projects like these are incredibly indie web in feel; that is, they demonstrate the internet at its best. They are also tough sells in that they are such specific vibes, but I think this is so special and brings me such delight that I imagine it might resonate with some of you, too.
Daniel K has made audio Lets Plays for a whole bunch of games from Pikmin to Pokemon to Eurotruck Simulator to various itch.io indie games and more aside. He's credited by the creators of the popular (in relative terms) No One Can Know About This (a Final Fantasy audio lets paly series) as their inspiration. He's also made podcast series about reviewing Flavoured Milk called, fittingly, Milkin' It.
Yet it his most recent series, Digimon for Sleep, that I think is the most special. He records each episode nominally for his son to listen to when he's having trouble sleeping; each episode is, however, as much about the digressions and the expanding Daniel K lore as it is about playing through the game itself.
The episodes are often recorded in various places around Perth, with ambient audio included sometimes, and feature digressions about the definitions of isthmus as opposed to other types of land/water interactions, k-pop observations, musings on various animal calls, and dialogues between Daniel K and "editor Dan". He is a man with both incredible love for his kid and a breadth of interests almost the size of the observable universe.
There's this delightful tension between the obvious effort he puts into creating these and also how organic and crunchy they feel. In an era where podcasts are becoming increasingly slick and, in some ways, generic, listening to a new episode of this series is always an unexpected adventure. It's something that on paper sounds like it shouldn't work, but there's real magic to be found.
Projects like these are incredibly indie web in feel; that is, they demonstrate the internet at its best. They are also tough sells in that they are such specific vibes, but I think this is so special and brings me such delight that I imagine it might resonate with some of you, too.
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posted by HearHere at 2:33 PM on August 21