Yet Another Gaming Blog

I’ve been looking forward to this one. My experience with EGX last year left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, and I’ve been hoping something might fill the “Rezzed” shaped hole. I’d hoped it would be “WASD”, thought that shuttered before I even managed to get to an event. But the London Games Festival stepped up. A brand new expo, titled New Game Plus, took place at the London Museum Exhibition Spaces, showcasing about 80 games over two days. I was in immediately.

I didn’t even have to wake up that early for it. 7.30, shower, make a cup of tea, out the door and on the train by 8am. A quick stop at “The Bagel Factory” for some breakfast at Marylebone Station (the queue at Greggs was obscene), a walk over the Baker Street, underground to Barbican, and I was at the venue at about 9.45. Very efficient. 

Back of the net

After checking in and getting another cup of tea, I headed straight downstairs to where the bulk of the games being shown were located. There wasn’t really anything I was looking to get hands on with specifically, so I plonked myself down at the first free booth I saw, and started playing Maid Cafe on Electric Street. 5 minutes later, I was greeted with a screen saying “Bad End 1”, which was demoralising, I’ll be honest. I’m not really sure what I was supposed to be doing with it, but clearly I got it wrong. Ah well. 

A short hop across the aisle put me in front of STRIKER!, a game a little more my speed. Developed by the one man TEAM/OURO, striker is a football/golf puzzle game, tasking you with scoring in as few passes as possible. The game’s good! Some of my passing between the players on the pitch reminded me a bit of me in 5 a sides; massively off target. We’re a bit away from it being ready for release, but I’ll be keeping my eye on this one, especially after the dev suggested he’d like to get it on Switch eventually.

Next Day Delivery

Deliver At All Costs was next on the agenda, and this felt like a bit of a throwback. An isometric 3D game where you play as a guy 3 months behind on his rent, doing delivery jobs for a strange company. The game promised a little more intrigue and mystery than my time with the demo showed, and it looked rough. It’s not slated for release until May 22nd, however, so they’ve still got time to make everything look a bit smoother. The gameplay was solid, though. I couldn’t get my head around the camera, and ended up smashing into just about everything, which appears to be encouraged. It was pretty fun, but it needs a layer of polish.

I spent about 15 minutes with Take Us North, a narrative game the developers referred to as “survival-lite”. The game centres around a group of migrants seeking to cross the US-Mexico border. It’s still early in production, with those representing it suggesting they’re around 30% of the way through, but they do have a Kickstarter which will go live soon. They’re working with real migrants and asylum seekers to draw on their experiences to ensure the story being told is as authentic as possible. Given the state of the world right now, this feels like it could be an important one.

Bitsummit, a Japanese games expo, has a small booth here, which feels nice. I spent a quarter of an hour with CASSETTE BOY, which is deceptive. It starts as a top down, 2D Zelda-like, complete with Game Boy-style assets. A little while in, however, it adds a 3d element. Imagine Fez but with more action elements. Puzzles are completed by simply making them disappear by changing the camera angle. It’s pretty clever. One of those that feels at home of the Switch, where it doesn’t appear to have released yet.

Take a break

After a few hours I was feeling pretty overwhelmed, so used this opportunity to get some fresh air and some lunch. A sandwich shop called “Sandwich Sandwich”, which sells sandwiches. The queue was obscene, so I decided to forgo getting their “Southern Fried Chicken” sandwich in favour of an “Italian Chicken” sandwich, because they didn’t have to make it up and the “grab and go” line was way shorter. It was nice. Very messy. Would go again on a quieter day.

Dung Slinger was ultimately my final stop at the event. A small team from Berlin developed this physics-driven platformer as a school project, and it just grew from there. You play as a beetle chained to a ball of dung who’s trying to escape prison. It’s really impressive just how slick it runs, man. It looks really nice, too, sort of Paper Mario-y in it’s flat 2D characters. It reminded me a little of Yoku’s Island Express. Again, very hopeful for this.

As the day went on, the rooms just got busier and busier. I’ll cover it a bit more in a more general piece in the next few days, but the size of the rooms available vs the amount of people present meant the walkways just got busier and busier. I chose to call it. Six games isn’t bad going, especially as I got to spend a good amount of time with them all. With that, I headed back to Marylebone. I’ll have some more general opinions in the coming days, but let me sat that New Games Plus was really nice. It felt good to be at. I really hope it’s successful and kickstarts a new wave of games shows in this vein.

Featured Image Credit: London Games Festival