"Welcome to Liquid Courage, the show where we drink and make fun of video games!"
Formed in 2013, Liquid Courage is a three-man Let's Play series. The show is a weekly hour-long review of beer and video games. The hosts focus on maintaining constant communication with their viewers; their Twitch chat can be seen in almost every video, and they always request that viewers submit games to play or beers to drink.
The Liquid Courage Crew are:
- Flatline - Generally the one who plays the games and does the introduction.
- Xolvomir - The main chat moderator and usually most deadpan of the three.
- Tasty Freeze - Supplies the beer and is generally the foil to Flatline.
The show is streamed live every Wednesday morning at 1 AM Eastern on Twitch
, then archived on their YouTube channel. Their YouTube channel also has three other series that are pre-recorded:
- Let's Learn How to Play - A series where friends of the show teach Flatline (and the viewer) how to play various games.
- Die Cast - Shows wherein the hosts invite friends of the show to play tabletop role playing games.
- The Siege - What started as a face-cam solo show for Flatline evolved into an audio-only LP series focused on longer games.
Games that have been on Liquid Courage
- Slender Mans Shadow
- SCP – Containment Breach (and the the MLP mod).
- White Day
- Thomas Was Alone
- Lone Survivor
- Maere When Lights Die
- DreadOut
- Mondo Medicals
- Silent Hill 2
- Mag Runner Dark Pulse
- Flash Frozen
- Luna Game
- Super Filly Adventure
- Vanish
- The Crooked Man
- Paranormal
- Monaco
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent
- Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
- Trine
- Zombie Master
- Knock-Knock
- Ib
- Sir, You Are Being Hunted
- State of Decay
- The Stanley Parable
- Gone Home
- Contrast
- The Novelist
- Kentucky Route Zero
- Minotaur
- Babysitter Bloodbath
- Alchamilla
- LIMBO
- Octodad Dadliest Catch
- Slender: The Arrival
- Dream
- Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams
- Jazzpunk
- Cargo! The Quest for Gravity
- Goat Simulator
- Turbo Dismount
- Strider
- Hotline Miami
- Deadlight
- Daylight
- Watch_Dogs
Games that have been on The Siege
Games that have been on Let's Learn How To Play
Games that have been on Die Cast
These gamers provides examples of:
- Comedic Sociopathy: Flatline, during the Watch_Dogs playthrough. Gleefully mowing down pedestrians with his car, firing into crowds while pursuing a criminal, and causing untold thousands of dollars in property damage, cackling like a loon throughout.Flatline: "I'M THE HERO!"
- Cryptic Conversation:
- To the frustration of Flatline. He notably became so fed up with the malarky of the protagonist of Lone Survivor that he gave the character the derogatory name "Hot Dog".
- "Hot Dog" is name-dropped a few times in later episodes, often used as a rubric for how much a member of the Crew despises a character. Almost a year after Lone Survivor was played, no character has managed to piss off the Crew as much as Hot Dog did.
- Cyberpunk: Flatline is in love with it, and will often throw shout-outs to cyberpunk themes in some of the games they play.
- Deadpan Snarker: Xolvomir, occasionally.
- Drinking Game: One suggested in chat during Octodad: Dadliest Catch was to take a shot every time Flatline was too crippled with laughter to make progress in the game.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The show has notably got better in audio and visual quality over time. Also, the first two episodes of the series had the Crew drinking liquor instead of beer.
- Flat Joy: The infrequent, monotone exclamation of "yaaaay" from one or more of the hosts when some minor task is accomplished.
- Jump Scare:
- Happens quite a bit in some of the horror games on the show. The biggest jumpscare so far was near the end of Daylight, where the Witch scared Flatline so badly he bailed on the game entirely.
- Lampshaded by Flatline at the very end of Slender: The Arrival when the final monster jumps out.
Flatline: "I was actually too startled to be afraid." - Metroidvania: When executed correctly, will cause Flatline to gush like a swooning schoolgirl.
- No Inside Voice: All three at different times.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The only thing that scares Flatline more than something is nothing at all.
- Personal Space Invader: Flatline to Tasty Freeze, much to the latter's chagrin.
- Screamer Prank: Flatline shows a particular dislike of the genre as a whole, bitching almost the entire time they played the Luna Games. He cites his opinion that knowing it's a screamer arguably makes the whole experience stressful and un-fun.
- Self-Deprecation: If a member of the Crew fucks up, you can be sure either they or one of the other Crew members will call them out on it.
- Shout-Out: To a lot of things:
- Exalted: The Crew is in love with Exalted; most notably in the Strider playthrough, where they speculate on what Exalt types each character would be.
- Their IronClaw one-shot on Die Cast was inspired by The Dark Knight which was derailed by Karmic Pear right before the climax.
- Flatline will often recommend other media related to the game of the week for the audience to check out (Drive (2011) during Hotline Miami for example).
- The three are all avid fans of Markiplier and Game Grumps. The Crew cheerfully mentions if one of their contemporaries has played a game before they have.
- Flatline himself was a fan of some of the Something Awful era of Let's Players, including ProtonJon and Freelance Astronauts, mentioning the latter's Octodad playthrough as being very important to him.
- League of Legends is clearly the MOBA of choice of the Crew.
- There's a short poem at the beginning of Octodad: Dadliest Catch that references a similar poem from Nate's Vlogs.
- Shown Their Work: The Crew each brings their life experiences to the table.
- Flatline has a degree in video game design and while he bemoans it, he will often point out game design tropes (such as what he calls "Puzzle Elements").
- Xolvomir is very well-read in the fantasy genre, especially with respect to the works of Tolkien.
- Tasty Freeze has a vast knowledge of Old World of Darkness that he brings to the forefront occasionally.
- All three are avid tabletop gamers, and will explain (or sometimes lampshade) tabletop RPG influences in video games.
- Straight Man: The "Straight Man" hat is worn by various members of the Crew in different circumstances.
- Surrealism: Tasty Freeze has on multiple occasions expressed his distaste of the genre as a whole.
- The Oner: Every episode of Liquid Courage is streamed live, and the hosts all drink. Once the episode makes it to YouTube, only the beginning and end of the video are trimmed.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential:
- Comes up all the time in the Neverwinter Nights 2 playthrough. Verbally berating NPCs, pushing other characters into traps, aggroing monsters back to squishy party members, the regrettable purchase by Flatline of a necklace of Fireballs, Tasty Freeze playing fast and loose with his spells. Poor Xolvomir was the Only Sane Man throughout.
- See also: Damn near all of Trine.
- The Unseen: Tasty's wife (aka "Muskrat", aka "The Disembodied Voice That Sleeps With Me") and friend of the show Short-Circuit have not been filmed, though their voices can be heard (see the Call of Cthulhu Halloween episode). Karmic Pear was unseen as well until he appeared on Die Cast.
- Willing Suspension of Disbelief: Lampshaded by the Crew on a few games. Most notably, Xolvomir poking massive holes in the plot of Watch_Dogs during the beginning of that episode.
