How embarassing !
I had thought the Games Com was LAST weekend ! And then I had found out it was THIS weekend !
So, on Saturday afternoon I decided to take a look at it, after all. all of my hopes were lying with the Indies, I didn't expect someth9ing interesting from the "big ones" at all. In a way, most games from "the big ones" are "all the same" to me now. I hardly find any creativity there anymore, at least none that fits to my very personal style.
First thing i noticed was a map called "barrier-free access to the exhibition grounds". And how many wheelchair-bound people there were. I had never noticed them in the years before, but working in a firm that has lots of handicapped people, I've become more sensitive towards that.
They also hadearplugs again this year.
But now to the better things !
The first thing I want to talk about is something special. I put it into the top of my list here because that's important.
I met the game booth a bit later, but this is important.
I have often been lamenting that we just don't know about games being developed in Africa and in South America.
Now, there's a change to that.
ENTERAFRICA.ORG
This is an approach with the help of the Geothe Institute to make developers and games in general from the African continent known to "western" countries. It's like opening a blind eye. Charting uncharted territory, from the "estern" point of view. It is still a riddle to me why games from these continents are simply not known among people of the so-called "western" countries. we all emphasize on being culturally diverse - yet we have blind eyes.
enterafrica.org\locationbasedgames is a step further. This is focused on games with local themes. Local myths. If you browse through that list, you'll see that there is Creativity at work !
There is some kind of networking there as well. https://www.goethe.de/prj/eaf/en/net.html
But it doesn't stop with that. These developers from different countries put together a board game. It is called Busara. You can print it out and play with it.
https://www.goethe.de/prj/eaf/en/bus.html
So, I can say that at least a dream of mine has been fulfilled !
Someone has taken stepts to make games from Africa more known among other countries !
Now, the next step might be South America … And I have already told the representative that South America is also underrepresented in gaming … Perhaps the Geothe Institute will do that as well …
My first part of my actual journey through the Games Com led me to 1C , the makers of King's Bounty 2. I saw that everything is really realistically now.
I explained them that I rather liked the comic look of the earlier games, and at least i was treated respectfully and it was acknowledged that it was *also* important to them to hear a different opinion.
A nod towards me came when i said them that i believe that we currently live in an age in which everything must be more realistiv, more darker, and more brutal. So, it seems to me as if they had found that, too.
And I thought : Maybe this actually WAS the reason why they made the game look more realistic ?
I have a card from there with some sort of Pre-Order code on it. since i don't plan to buy this game because of its realistic look I'm giving that away.
Right on the other side of the street was something I found much more pleasant !
It was a game in the look of a Settlers game, but with a different name : Foundation.
Everything looks a LOT like a Settlers game !
According to the sheet of paper i got it is both on GOG and on Steam.
https://www.gog.com/game/foundation
https://store.steampowered.com/app/690830/Foundation/
I didn't look much into this game, because I had just arrived at the Games Com and wanted to proceed and see more games.
I tried to get to the Indie area. I found the Retro area not far from that first.
I always like to visit both.
It was fun to see old games being played by new kids.
I took a look at the Indies area, and it was full as ever. I think it's the most growing part of the Games Com. But that's just my very subjective point of view. And : Indies must be found first. it's like stumbling upon a special flower within a gread meadow. It just grows there. there isn't much adverstisement.
One game grabbed me. It's called "Nanotale - Typing Chronicles" and is the tale of an Archivist ("me !" I thought !) travelling out into the world and trying to find things for the own archive. Because Archivists with the biggest Archives are respected most. Or so I understood this backstory. and, there are dangers …
This game is unique, because it has one to type words with the keyboard in order to defend or attack adversaries.
Sadly I have never really gotten into this special genre of "typing games", mostly, because they are in English. I do not know a single one in German language. Or maybe i wasn't searching hard enough.
The small booklet - a rather beautiful one, imho, and the last one that was there, says that there is already a "Franchise of Typing Chronicles". I didn't know about that.
It looks rreally beautiful and has light colours. I think it's an "must have" for me now, personally.
www.nanotalegame.com
At one booth I took a card because it looked rather colourful. It reads : "Tearaway Unfolded", anjd appears to be a PS4 version of a game called Tearaway.
It looks like an rather unique idea, and it even has a Wikipedia page for it :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tearaway_Unfolded
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tearaway_(video_game)
Another game which took my attention was Weakless. Strange title,. Strage-looking protagonists.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1072620/Weakless/
What I love of this game is that it looks very organic. Organic in the sense of : Woods, plants, nature.
From the Steam page i read that these are 2 protagonists : One deaf, one blind.
I like that. I'm nearly eaf on one ear, too.
And we actually have deaf and blind ones in the firm I'm working in, too.
Of another game I just took a card : It's called "Danger Space".
It reminds me a bit of PRivateer, or the X games. I have not much than that, however, since I was still early in the games Com and wanted to go on and see more.
https://danger-space.com/about.php
After that, I met the booth of enterafrica.org But I told you about that above.
At that point I left that area and went towards the bigger halls.
At one point I noticed that there appears to be a remake ß of the original Settlers game. And apparingly there's a Collector's Edition as well.
One game I noticed was Concrete Genie.
What a title ! At first, it's sounding so dumb !
But … you have to dig a bit deeper to find out what this means …
This game got prizes as "the most original game" … although I noticed that I don't remember Indie games getting this prize …
Nevertheless, the game is about a boy, a teenager, kind of an outcast.
His name is Ash.
He roams freely in an abandoned part of a big city, a brown-grey one, full with abandoned houses, colourless houses, bent houses, wreckages of houses. One district which is inhabited by scornful, bad teenagers driving around in … no, not cars, but bicycles.
His story is that of painting walls. Walls of concrete, sometimes. And with these colourful paintings, he awakens genies. Some kinds of spirits.They bring colour back into this forgotten district.
So far, this game is for PS4 only, but I've added it onto my personal mental list. This is something I'd like to play : Making a dull, grey world more colourful. Begone, grimdark !
This game already has its Wikipedia page : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Genie
The theme reminds me of street art in RL in general, but this game takes it onto a new level.
It also reminded me of Epic Mickey, a game in which Mickey Mouse has to paint the dull-grey world to make it colourful again.
One thing which irriteted me hugely was the tiny article about the new Star Wars game : "Fallen Order". What irritated me was that the areticle was in the public Games Com magazine, but it was not displayed to the public. Business area ONLY.
Since the magazine usually only describes games which are accessible in one form or another to the public, more people might have been irritated as well.
Of course there's a two-class society at Games com : The business area - which has its own magazine, in English language, and VERY detailed hall maps ! - And the public area, with its own magazine - which is also accessibly by business visitors - and a very ROUGH hall map.
If you want the better part of the Games Com, you have to be a businessperson, says the message. Of course, businesspersons won't hear that, because they are businesspersons …
Hence my thought that … if the business area - which is ALWAYS the more interesting one ! - is not accessible to the public - then why not creata an area which is not accessible for businesspersons ? Crazy thought ? Yes, but it only shows how deep the gap between these 2 classes is !
From the magazines I couldn't draw much information I didn't already know.
THQ Nordic - as they call themselves now - had several booths in one. and rather interesting.
It included Biomutant, Destroy All Humans ! , SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated (I had to paste & copy that title, from their web page !), a Darksiders game, Monkey King (which looks like some kind of combat game / RPG), but why does he have those antennas on his head ?), Desperados III (RTS again, although I'm still waiting for an TBS version of it), and a few others.
What I liked most of this booth was Destroy all Humans !
It takes one back into the B-Movies of the 50s …
It is like … XCOM reversed : The goal is to Destroy all Humans ! Take a huge step on humankind !
Looks like fun, and the trailers are hilarious !
https://www.thqnordic.com/games/destroy-all-humans-0
I don't really know what this SpongeBob game is really about … It seems to be a remake of an earlier game with the same name ? I don't even understand what kind of gamepolay it has.
I like, however, this sentence from the web page : "Play as SpongeBob, Patrick and Sandy and show the evil Plankton that crime pays even less than Mr. Krabs."
It seems to be for the PC platform as well (and not only for consoles, which would one expect of such a colourful family-friendly game).
There were other games which made me think "why do these colourful games only appear on consoles ?" Like Luigi's Mnsion, a Nintendo verson of the Ghost Busters.
I don't like the Borderlands franchise at all. No, I really don't. But I had to admit that the booth painting was fairly impressive. It looked so much detailed, and was even bigger (expanding to the left and the right) than on my photo.
Well, I think that's it.
I left the Games Com with a bad feeling because i was too late at the Ubisoft merchandise booth : all Rabbids had been sold. The thing I came for and it was already sold ! That really depressed me and put me into a sad mood, but it was my own fault : I arrived there less than a quartet before 20:00 o'clock - and that is the official closing time of the Games Com. So, it was entirely my own fault, and I had to swallow that (we have a saying here in Germany : "to swallow a toad/paddock" , which means "to have to face and take something very unpleasant, without being able to do much against it").
And last, a quote from the Games Com business magazine :
""When I was a kid, I wanted to create games to help people dream and give them an escape. I wanted their gaming experience to provide positivity in their lives."
I don't give the name, because we all know of GamersGate and similar groups ... They want games like Dark Souls, Dark Siders, Call Of Duty and everything grimdark and heavymetallic instead.
So, again, this year my hopes were with the Indies - and i was not disappointed !
If I ever go to the Games Com, it will be for the Indies alone.
Alrik
I had thought the Games Com was LAST weekend ! And then I had found out it was THIS weekend !
So, on Saturday afternoon I decided to take a look at it, after all. all of my hopes were lying with the Indies, I didn't expect someth9ing interesting from the "big ones" at all. In a way, most games from "the big ones" are "all the same" to me now. I hardly find any creativity there anymore, at least none that fits to my very personal style.
First thing i noticed was a map called "barrier-free access to the exhibition grounds". And how many wheelchair-bound people there were. I had never noticed them in the years before, but working in a firm that has lots of handicapped people, I've become more sensitive towards that.
They also hadearplugs again this year.
But now to the better things !
The first thing I want to talk about is something special. I put it into the top of my list here because that's important.
I met the game booth a bit later, but this is important.
I have often been lamenting that we just don't know about games being developed in Africa and in South America.
Now, there's a change to that.
ENTERAFRICA.ORG
This is an approach with the help of the Geothe Institute to make developers and games in general from the African continent known to "western" countries. It's like opening a blind eye. Charting uncharted territory, from the "estern" point of view. It is still a riddle to me why games from these continents are simply not known among people of the so-called "western" countries. we all emphasize on being culturally diverse - yet we have blind eyes.
enterafrica.org\locationbasedgames is a step further. This is focused on games with local themes. Local myths. If you browse through that list, you'll see that there is Creativity at work !
There is some kind of networking there as well. https://www.goethe.de/prj/eaf/en/net.html
But it doesn't stop with that. These developers from different countries put together a board game. It is called Busara. You can print it out and play with it.
https://www.goethe.de/prj/eaf/en/bus.html
So, I can say that at least a dream of mine has been fulfilled !
Someone has taken stepts to make games from Africa more known among other countries !Now, the next step might be South America … And I have already told the representative that South America is also underrepresented in gaming … Perhaps the Geothe Institute will do that as well …
My first part of my actual journey through the Games Com led me to 1C , the makers of King's Bounty 2. I saw that everything is really realistically now.
I explained them that I rather liked the comic look of the earlier games, and at least i was treated respectfully and it was acknowledged that it was *also* important to them to hear a different opinion.
A nod towards me came when i said them that i believe that we currently live in an age in which everything must be more realistiv, more darker, and more brutal. So, it seems to me as if they had found that, too.
And I thought : Maybe this actually WAS the reason why they made the game look more realistic ?
I have a card from there with some sort of Pre-Order code on it. since i don't plan to buy this game because of its realistic look I'm giving that away.
Right on the other side of the street was something I found much more pleasant !
It was a game in the look of a Settlers game, but with a different name : Foundation.
Everything looks a LOT like a Settlers game !
According to the sheet of paper i got it is both on GOG and on Steam.
https://www.gog.com/game/foundation
https://store.steampowered.com/app/690830/Foundation/
I didn't look much into this game, because I had just arrived at the Games Com and wanted to proceed and see more games.
I tried to get to the Indie area. I found the Retro area not far from that first.
I always like to visit both.
It was fun to see old games being played by new kids.
I took a look at the Indies area, and it was full as ever. I think it's the most growing part of the Games Com. But that's just my very subjective point of view. And : Indies must be found first. it's like stumbling upon a special flower within a gread meadow. It just grows there. there isn't much adverstisement.
One game grabbed me. It's called "Nanotale - Typing Chronicles" and is the tale of an Archivist ("me !" I thought !) travelling out into the world and trying to find things for the own archive. Because Archivists with the biggest Archives are respected most. Or so I understood this backstory. and, there are dangers …
This game is unique, because it has one to type words with the keyboard in order to defend or attack adversaries.
Sadly I have never really gotten into this special genre of "typing games", mostly, because they are in English. I do not know a single one in German language. Or maybe i wasn't searching hard enough.
The small booklet - a rather beautiful one, imho, and the last one that was there, says that there is already a "Franchise of Typing Chronicles". I didn't know about that.
It looks rreally beautiful and has light colours. I think it's an "must have" for me now, personally.
www.nanotalegame.com
At one booth I took a card because it looked rather colourful. It reads : "Tearaway Unfolded", anjd appears to be a PS4 version of a game called Tearaway.
It looks like an rather unique idea, and it even has a Wikipedia page for it :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tearaway_Unfolded
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tearaway_(video_game)
Another game which took my attention was Weakless. Strange title,. Strage-looking protagonists.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1072620/Weakless/
What I love of this game is that it looks very organic. Organic in the sense of : Woods, plants, nature.
From the Steam page i read that these are 2 protagonists : One deaf, one blind.
I like that. I'm nearly eaf on one ear, too.
And we actually have deaf and blind ones in the firm I'm working in, too.
Of another game I just took a card : It's called "Danger Space".
It reminds me a bit of PRivateer, or the X games. I have not much than that, however, since I was still early in the games Com and wanted to go on and see more.
https://danger-space.com/about.php
After that, I met the booth of enterafrica.org But I told you about that above.
At that point I left that area and went towards the bigger halls.
At one point I noticed that there appears to be a remake ß of the original Settlers game. And apparingly there's a Collector's Edition as well.
One game I noticed was Concrete Genie.
What a title ! At first, it's sounding so dumb !
But … you have to dig a bit deeper to find out what this means …
This game got prizes as "the most original game" … although I noticed that I don't remember Indie games getting this prize …
Nevertheless, the game is about a boy, a teenager, kind of an outcast.
His name is Ash.
He roams freely in an abandoned part of a big city, a brown-grey one, full with abandoned houses, colourless houses, bent houses, wreckages of houses. One district which is inhabited by scornful, bad teenagers driving around in … no, not cars, but bicycles.
His story is that of painting walls. Walls of concrete, sometimes. And with these colourful paintings, he awakens genies. Some kinds of spirits.They bring colour back into this forgotten district.
So far, this game is for PS4 only, but I've added it onto my personal mental list. This is something I'd like to play : Making a dull, grey world more colourful. Begone, grimdark !
This game already has its Wikipedia page : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Genie
The theme reminds me of street art in RL in general, but this game takes it onto a new level.
It also reminded me of Epic Mickey, a game in which Mickey Mouse has to paint the dull-grey world to make it colourful again.
One thing which irriteted me hugely was the tiny article about the new Star Wars game : "Fallen Order". What irritated me was that the areticle was in the public Games Com magazine, but it was not displayed to the public. Business area ONLY.
Since the magazine usually only describes games which are accessible in one form or another to the public, more people might have been irritated as well.
Of course there's a two-class society at Games com : The business area - which has its own magazine, in English language, and VERY detailed hall maps ! - And the public area, with its own magazine - which is also accessibly by business visitors - and a very ROUGH hall map.
If you want the better part of the Games Com, you have to be a businessperson, says the message. Of course, businesspersons won't hear that, because they are businesspersons …
Hence my thought that … if the business area - which is ALWAYS the more interesting one ! - is not accessible to the public - then why not creata an area which is not accessible for businesspersons ? Crazy thought ? Yes, but it only shows how deep the gap between these 2 classes is !
From the magazines I couldn't draw much information I didn't already know.
THQ Nordic - as they call themselves now - had several booths in one. and rather interesting.
It included Biomutant, Destroy All Humans ! , SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated (I had to paste & copy that title, from their web page !), a Darksiders game, Monkey King (which looks like some kind of combat game / RPG), but why does he have those antennas on his head ?), Desperados III (RTS again, although I'm still waiting for an TBS version of it), and a few others.
What I liked most of this booth was Destroy all Humans !
It takes one back into the B-Movies of the 50s …
It is like … XCOM reversed : The goal is to Destroy all Humans ! Take a huge step on humankind !
Looks like fun, and the trailers are hilarious !
https://www.thqnordic.com/games/destroy-all-humans-0
I don't really know what this SpongeBob game is really about … It seems to be a remake of an earlier game with the same name ? I don't even understand what kind of gamepolay it has.
I like, however, this sentence from the web page : "Play as SpongeBob, Patrick and Sandy and show the evil Plankton that crime pays even less than Mr. Krabs."
It seems to be for the PC platform as well (and not only for consoles, which would one expect of such a colourful family-friendly game).
There were other games which made me think "why do these colourful games only appear on consoles ?" Like Luigi's Mnsion, a Nintendo verson of the Ghost Busters.
I don't like the Borderlands franchise at all. No, I really don't. But I had to admit that the booth painting was fairly impressive. It looked so much detailed, and was even bigger (expanding to the left and the right) than on my photo.
Well, I think that's it.
I left the Games Com with a bad feeling because i was too late at the Ubisoft merchandise booth : all Rabbids had been sold. The thing I came for and it was already sold ! That really depressed me and put me into a sad mood, but it was my own fault : I arrived there less than a quartet before 20:00 o'clock - and that is the official closing time of the Games Com. So, it was entirely my own fault, and I had to swallow that (we have a saying here in Germany : "to swallow a toad/paddock" , which means "to have to face and take something very unpleasant, without being able to do much against it").
And last, a quote from the Games Com business magazine :
""When I was a kid, I wanted to create games to help people dream and give them an escape. I wanted their gaming experience to provide positivity in their lives."
I don't give the name, because we all know of GamersGate and similar groups ... They want games like Dark Souls, Dark Siders, Call Of Duty and everything grimdark and heavymetallic instead.
So, again, this year my hopes were with the Indies - and i was not disappointed !
If I ever go to the Games Com, it will be for the Indies alone.
Alrik
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