Some games I played at AdventureX
This last weekend I was at AdventureX! It's a conference in London for adventure games. I spent the weekend making the joke that I detest all adventure games, which is not really true but is a little bit true. Why did I go to an adventure games conference, then? Well, I have a strong interest in experimental interactive narrative, and this is the best conference I know of for that which is also within half an hour's cycle from my flat And I also have a very strong interest in catching up with friends I haven't seen in a while, and it turns out I know a lot of games writers and they all come out for AdventureX. Like snails when it rains.
Anyway! While I was there I saw some good talks, had some great conversations, and also played some games. I'm now going to tell you about the games that I played that I would be interested in playing more of. Maybe you too would be interested in playing them?
psychotic bathtub
Honestly this one stood out immediately just for the boldness and clarity of the graphic design. A banner which has the confidence to be mostly one colour, a game which you can read the text on from across the room. A game where the text is gorgeously graphically designed, where it is not separate from the art but expressive and alive and telling as much by what it looks like as by what it says.
The Marvelous Raincaster of Yell Holler
I am going to be honest and admit I got stuck on the demo puzzle. But I am still recommending it anyway, just because the art and the animation and the way it frames each page is so beautifully done. And the narrative you get (which is the hints for the ordering puzzle) are all... stanzas with rhyme & meter? It's from the people who did Burly Men At Sea, if that gives you a sense of the polish on display here.
The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker 2
Listen I try not to be too obvious about this stuff online but when the gameplay experience is interviewing a hot goth who sounds like Sarah Nixey from Black Box Recorder about her medically implausible inability to feel pleasure since a traumatic horseriding accident as a small child and also about the string of deaths that have accompanied her since then... I admit it, yes, I find this sexually attractive. Maybe this is more than you wanted to know about me, I am sorry if so.
But I mean, I'm not just recommending this because I found the character hot. I'm recommending it because I found her camp. Whilst I never really played any classic FMV games... I always imagined them as camp as hell, and it turns out that I kinda always wanted to play a camp as hell FMV game.
Slime in the Ice Machine
This is the only game I played where I took a picture of the screen because I wanted to show someone a particular line of dialogue. When I first sat down I worried it was gonna be very American. And not that I don't like Americans or America, or indeed games which lovingly capture the particular vibes of a specific place in America. But also America is the hegemonic cultural force across the Western world, and I sometimes feel like I should play as many games set in the Midlands as I do ones that are set in Texas, you know? Anyway, that worry was completely unfounded. Seems like this game really goes places. And it's so rich with detail about characters and places you interact with, just funny jokes but set in well faked up bits of websites or paperwork or whatever or couched in dialogue. Sometimes you have to look at this stuff and sometimes you can skate by without it. That just gives you this beautiful feeling of generosity, you know?
Okay, we now enter a section where I recommend to you things that I didn't actually play at AdventureX. Do my recommendations still hold any weight? Let's find out!
Stop The Press!
I peered over someone's shoulder at this one, and I wish I had played it. It's a newspaper publishing simulator. You have to decide on the print run, upgrade your presses, choose what stories will sell, etc etc. Except that's not really why people run papers, is it? They run papers because they wanna influence public opinion and meddle in politics. And this simulates that, too.
Which seems like a meaty concept! And one where I can see ways that narrative and mechanics would combine to create something larger than both of them. Someone I was chatting to said it was good, too.
All Will Rise
Well in this case I have played the demo, just at a different event, ages ago. So it's a card battler, right? Except the cards you're battling with are being used to try to construct arguments to try to persuade people. And you're choosing where to spend your time and energy arguing with people in order to try to bring to justice the capitalists that murdered a river.
But that's not what people were talking about when I went over to the stand to have a natter with Meghna*. What they were saying was: damn, this is gorgeous? So often when you try to make something that uses all the colours it just ends up muddy but here everything is clear and there's contrast against the highlights and wow, great work.
(* Oh yeah, also the writer is Meghna Jayanth? You know, from 80 Days and all that? She's very good at writing videogames. So this has that going for it, too.)
Wax Heads
Didn't play this because it's already on my to-play list! It's a game about working in a record shop and recommending records to people and it just looks and feels so warm and inviting? Like... like an amp covered in die cut stickers, sitting in the sunlight at a little local festival down the road, and oh! hey Meg how are you doing? Are you playing this afternoon? Ah cool, yeah, great to hear, catch you later!
The Mermaid Mask
And this I didn't play because I've played the previous two games in the series and I had a great time with them both. And people say this one is even better! Rich with enjoyable one off interactive bits, funny dialogue, characters with immaculate design (the shapes they made in Tangle Tower!)... just one of those games where you start playing it and you realise you're relaxing because you know you're in safe hands.
Okay! That's your lot! What did we learn from all this? I think we learned that I probably do like adventure games as long as I'm tricked into playing them. Maybe we also learned that I like to judge a book videogame by its cover graphic design. I think we also learned that there are a lot of good videogames out there, more than I am actually likely to play at home. And finally, maybe you learned things about the kinds of people I find attractive that you didn't want to know. Sorry about that if so.
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