Dawn of the second day. 48 hours remain. Last night, Andrew, Jeremy, and I met up at the Last Hurrah bar in the lobby of our hotel to swap stories. I grab a few recommendations from them to check out today.
I’ve decided that 28 degree weather is where I draw the line. I take the shuttle today in lieu of walking, though Andrew and Jeremy march on without me.
The shuttle is actually waiting for me right outside of the hotel, and I make it to my spot in line at exactly 9am. I’m a bit disappointed – I actually hate waiting in lines and was hoping I’d arrive a little later. I pass the hour with a Nexpo video (thank god I brought my wireless earbuds). Since I’ve got an early lead at the con, I decide to try out Fuser at the Harmonix booth before the crowds arrive.
Wow, lots of thoughts on this one. First of all, this was way more fun than I expected it to be. The game involves you picking out tracks (ie. vocals, drums, bass, guitar, synth, etc.) from 16 pre-selected songs and mixing them together. The game then auto-mixes your track selection together to create a dance beat.
It’s not much to look at as a spectator. In fact, it’s not really fun at all unless you can hear it.
The fun of this game really comes from randomly mixing various tracks and seeing what sort of sound comes from it. Sometimes it’s surprisingly catchy, and other times it’s sounds like garbage. 16 songs with four tracks each gives 64 possible tracks to choose from, which is a hell of a lot of song combinations.
What didn’t catch me was the gameplay element, which had you switching up the tracks based on crowd requests. Some things I saw in the demo included requests for a new drum track, and track from the 90’s, and a track from a pop song. Fulfilling these requests earns you points. You also get points for switching out the tracks in time with a downbeat, which I thought was clever.
This doesn’t feel like a whole lot to sustain an entire campaign though. Also, I found that it was possible to easily fulfill crowd requests even though the songs I made didn’t actually sound great. For now though, Fuser has me intrigued.
I skipped breakfast so now it’s time to eat. I discover a teriyaki place on the second floor that actually serves vegetables. Look at me, eating healthy food at a convention like its Buckingham Palace or something.
I’m ready to clear out the rest of the Indie Megabooth. It’s time for a Lightning Round!
Moncage looks like it’s a puzzle-box game where each side of a cube shows a different scene inside of it. You need to rotate the cube so that you can swap items between areas to solve puzzles. So for example, a rock dropped at a construction site on one side falls into another side and destroys a statue there, revealing an item inside.
Collapsus is a block puzzle game akin to Candy Crush where you need to destroy blocks in order to line up four of the same block colors in a row. Clicking a block destroys it, allowing the blocks above to to fall into place and form rows of the same color. The trick here is that when you destroy a block, the remaining blocks fall in the direction your tablet or phone is oriented, allowing you to shift the rows and columns in four directions. Surprisingly addictive.
Overpass is a rythm game where you pass under arches that tell you what direction on the game pad you need to hold as you pass under them. I didn’t get a chance to play it, but it looks fun. Music is great.
Relic Hunters is a rogue-like twin-stick shooter. They’re apparently releasing a sequel and remaster soon.
Spiritfarer is a serene resource gathering/crafting game where you upgrade a fishing boat to house animal spirits and ferry them into the afterlife. Sounds grim, but the graphics are extremely cute and music is very calming. Gorgeous hand-drawn artwork.
I finally spot one of the games Jeremy wants me to play – Cloak and Dasher. It’s a stress platformer akin to Super Meat Boy. The controls are simple – a button to jump/double jump and a button to dash. The gameplay is so simple that the devs put out USB NES controllers to play the game. Like Super Meat Boy, the gameplay is quick and difficult, with instant respawn to boot. A very fun game.
After a brief lunch break I’m back on the floor. I spot the massive THQ Nordic booth, which is showing off Destroy All Humans, Wasteland 3, Desperadoes, and Darksiders: Genesis. Across the row is the Nintendo booth with its massive Animal Crossing: New Leaf set.
It’s now halfway through the day, so it’s about time I hit up some of the games on my to-do list. I wait an hour in line for the VR game Area Man Lives, where you play a radio DJ who needs to read news, queue records, and answer callers all using the VR microphone.
The demo is fun, but there was no tutorial for it, so I spent a good amount of time simply trying to figure out what the game wanted me to do. The mic also had a hard time registering my voice on the noisy con floor. Nonetheless, my impression of the game was good, and I would gladly give it a try if I ever own a VR headset.
Up on the second floor, the a group of cosplaying Assassins parades by me.
GDQ apparently also has a stage here this year.
I see that acclaimed Half-Life mod Black Mesa is finally getting a 1.0 retail release. I played this game years ago and it was phenomenal, and is perhaps one of the finest mods I’ve ever seen. Apparently Valve gave them the green-light for an official release, and no game could be more deserving. Well done, fellas.
Over at the Indie Games Poland booth, I try out Help Will Come Tomorrow, a survival sim set in Siberia during the October Revolution. Your goal is to manage four survivors of a train derailment by White Russian renegades.
The ice-cold Siberian wilderness is harsh – you need to manage your four survivors’ needs such as hunger, thirst, and warmth while gathering resources to build a shelter and survive.
I generally enjoy difficult management sims (see: Frostpunk, Darkest Dungeon) and overall the game was well-polished (no pun intended). I’ll probably be returning to this booth tomorrow to check out these other Polish games, there’s a bunch of them here.
I wander a bit before my final goal of hitting the Devolver booth. Along the aisle I spot Hardspace Shipbreaker, which I’ll give a try tomorrow.
Next to that booth I try out Construction Simulator and Liftoff Drone Racing. Construction Simulator is pretty fun, until I realize I am literally playing a game to do things people are normally paid money to do. Liftoff Drone Racing is pretty meh.
Dead Cells apparently has a presence at the con this year. My brother Chris and friend Mel have both put a lot of hours into this one recently.
I finally head for the Devolver booth, where I’m surprised to see that they’ve cut down their demo games to just two – Disc Room and Carrion (plus the large Fall Guys booth next door). Both were recommended to me by Jeremy, so I wait in line for one of the stations to open.
Disc Room is pretty decent – I would call it a “sawblade hell” dodging game. Each room in the game requires you to dodge a bunch of moving saw blades for as long as possible, and every few seconds more saw blades are added. You advance to the next rooms by surviving for a long enough time, or by getting killed by enough different types of sawblades.
The real treat though is Carrion, which is a 2D Metroidvania-style game where you control a hideous amalgamation of flesh that tumbles around military installation and slithers through ventilation shafts. You consume people to grow your mass. The more people you consume, the more health you get and the larger you grow.
Along the way, various scientists, drones, gun emplacements, and soldiers attempt to kill you. The game is absolutely beautiful, especially in the way the monster is animated. Fairly sure I saw this one last year, but I didn’t try it out. Definitely one of my top picks for the con this year.
With five minutes left on the expo floor, I sneak in a quick game of Root, a cute turn-based strategy game where you control one of four animal factions attempting to control a forest.
Each turn you are allotted three actions, which can be used to move a unit to another tile, recruit more soldiers, or construct infrastructure buildings on one of the tiles you control.
Overall the game was rather charming, and I want to play more of it now. I only got through the tutorial before a PAX Enforcer kicked me off the floor, but I can see how the simple mechanics can combine to form rather complex tactics. I may try this one again tomorrow.
Seems like it was more of the same today – a lot of just hitting every game in sight. I haven’t even attended any panels this year, nor have I visited tabletop at all.
Looks like I’ll need most of tomorrow to hit up the rest of the games I want to see as well – 30XX is on the list, as is Fall Guys with Andrew and Jeremy. And then there’s still PAX Rising to take a look at it.
So many games, so little time. But for now it’s time to regroup with Andrew and Jeremy at the hotel bar to swap stories.
See you later, Space Cowboy.
