EA at TooManyGames 2014 Day 3

The grand finale of TooManyGames is where people try to squeeze in that last bits of the con adventuring into the remaining hours. Typically, the attendees that were part of the Final Boss after party are the ones a little bit more sluggish soldiering on the final day. You can’t dance the night away without some after effects. It also doesn’t help the stick in the mud feeling when you are surrounded by fresh faced people that attend only Sunday just to bargain with vendors or whoop ass in a game tournament. (By the way, it’s easy to play games against a sleep derive gamer, so maybe they should have a division in the tournaments that got sleep and those that decided 3 cans of Red Bulls at 2 am is a good night time drink). My main focus today was to get to as many gaming booths while jumping back into concerts, getting a caffeine fix and haggling for last minute trades.

Making the rounds of the tables, I approached the guys behind the game Default Dan. These guys were once my booth neighbors at TooManyGames 2013, so it was great to see them again and how far they have progressed with their product. Default Dan is a twisted on the Super Mario style platformer where all of the conventional mechanics are reversed. So don’t touch coins, mushrooms and blocks.  I’ve played a version where the character of Dan was replaced by the face of Leigh Daniel Avidan, aka “Danny Sexbang” from Ninja Sex Party. It doesn’t make the game any easier to master.

Next, I stopped by Wimbus Studios‘ booth and checked out their latest build on The Island of Eternal Struggle, a JRPG style game that expands upon the conventional turn base combat mechanics with some fast pace mini-games and hilarious enemy types to fight. The version I played is the updated build and the trailer below is based on the older version. You won’t be seeing a Pimp Pigeon’s in that version, but you will want to.

 

 

I reached Semag Studio‘s booth and was drawn to the game You’re Fired! , it’s Semag Studio’s take on the infinite runner plathformer where you try to run and burn as much office building as you can. You collect power ups to help Jerry Canned’s quest to get revenge on the work place. It fast paced, a bit dark in humor and perfect for playing at work in real life.

Down the from them, I stopped at The Automatic Gentlemen‘s booth where the first thing that grabbed my attending was this sign:

Clever. It did get me to stop and wonder what these guys where up to.  The guys at Automatic Gentleman showed me Lunch War! were I played  lunch lady Augusta Gudenov as she fends off hordes of highschoolers from fudgesicles. It’s a mix some Space Invaders & Tapper as my goal is to send projectiles into enemies and touch for power ups and support. This game works really well on a mobile devices and you can sink hours into this little game. 

Around the corner, was Skull Fire Games, they were showing off Fizzy Pop, a game I can mixes action and puzzle elements, getting a nice blend of  “Space Bowling”. You play as a Soda can that is launched into the air, were you collect power ups and obtain projects to defeat enemies block your way as the can ascends into space.

I took a small break from the digital stuff, and headed to the top table selection. I am not much of a table top gamer, but I do enjoy the art on the cards and packaging that they come in. Often, if the art is creative enough, I’ll take a moment to look at the what the game is about. That’s was mindset when I stopped at the Firelight Game Company‘s booth.

I have vague memories back in college where people where talking about Queen’s Blade and the crazy anime that it’s based on, but I didn’t know anything about the series till now. I won’t recommend googling any images in public, but it’s worth taking a look. Queen’s Blade is actually a spin off from the Lost World series designed by Aflred Leonardi. He created the genre of  “Combat book” games in 1983, but instead of featuring cutesy, questionably aged anime girls duking it out, it had really awesome classical monsters and heroic figures fight.

I was offered to play a round of book combat with Jill Leonardi, Alfred‘s daughter and I don’t turn down a combat invitation. It took a few minutes to understand the rule and the flow of picture book combat. Each person picks a character book to play as and gives it to the opponent. They each pick moves from a list on a separate card and looks up the effect in the book. You can perform attacks or defensive moves until one player has lost all their health. It make sound like a lot of steps, but once you get one or two moves into the combat the gameplay becomes easily digestible to any gamer.

The clock was running out at this point, and I had two things to do before the day was over. Random a.k.a Mega ran  was playing a set in the concert hall and I’ve originally got into Mega ran‘s work from his song of Splashwoman, so I was eager to see it performed live.

In the final hour of TooManyGames, I managed to get into the AVGN panel room to get the Vol 1 of the AVGN DVD signed by the Cinemassacre crew. There’s always a little bit of nerves and excitement mixed together whenever you meet personalities. You want to keep it cool, but inside you just want to explode with praising and your tale of personal history with their works. But, there are no second takes with first impressions. Luckily, exhaustion and minor hang over kept me from taking up too much of their time at the table. No promises next time Cinemassacre.

I undertook 3 days of drinking, partying, marketing, trading, networking and giving our twitter account a workout. This was TooManyGames 10 Year Anniversary and it was celebrated by all, I can’t wait till what events and craziness goes on next year.