Haha if you want to see my nervous mug ask Ragnar Tornquist and Martin a question during the Dreamfall Chapters dev session:
http://www.twitch.tv/egx/c/3973840?t=36m
The game looks incredible seeing it on such a big screen, can’t wait to walk around Europolis and look above. Watch the dev session, their implementation of choices (not moral choices as in most games) with Walking Dead style stats of who chose what was pretty cool. Lots of new footage.
I asked both of them in-person some cheeky questions of whether people in underwear and cannon stroking will be in the game
Much better venue or at least less cramped and easier to navigate than the previous EGX in London. Better selection of games too, personally. Reflects how sparse the next-gen market is right now that the only big games were Infamous Second Son, Titanfall, and Alien: Isolation. One thing that was incredibly encouraging about the Alien Isolation gigantic 60 stall booth (20 stalls for PS4, Xbox One, and PC of your choosing) was you could spend as much time as you want (yes, more than an hour) to complete the demo. It’s reassuring when game types like horror are given due with the right environment. One immediate flaw of the Oculus Rift is it can’t handle you wearing glasses as it’s quite tight, so either I get my laser surgery or they try to accommodate for that.
The Leftfield indie dev section, smallest of the small indies, filled up quite spectacularly and it was cute to see the developers write the name of the game and instructions on the white walls.
I spot a Rami Ismail (Vlambeer)!
Cloudbuilt shirt but with a B-rank, yeah not possible!
Eden Star
Broforce and Luftrausers
Retro area where I spotted an OG xbox and Stranger’s Wrath (both of which I still have):
SWAG SWAG PINS ARE THE BEST
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If anyone can share more impressions of Murdered Soul Suspect, I'd appreciate it.
Murdered: Soul Suspect
This is a straight up paranormal detective adventure game, and I loved it. You start off outside where you investigate your dead body as a ghost and try to piece together about 8 clues. You can possess everyone on the street and read their minds, sometimes you can even “influence” them to reveal more. I ended up zipping around everyone with the possession, Stacking-style.
The real meat starts in the apartment, of which you need to get to the 4th floor to check out your fall. You can move through walls like noclip, quite funny to see half a body moving around a pool table or kitchen tops. The most interesting part was this “sidequest” (that you can totally miss) where you meet a young ghost girl in the laundry doom and figure out how she might have been murdered by an old couple. It was quite darkly comedic. Once you find enough items that led to the events to solve the case, you have to piece the order the events happened in which is marked on a three-strike system. There’s another case of a family homicide, and then you move upstairs.
Stealth with demons. Not as bad as I thought. They’ll roam the halls and if you get the jump on them, you can hold R2 for execution which is then followed by a QTE prompt (left analog direction + Square/Triangle/Circle). If they spot you, you can jump from hiding spot to hiding spot much like I was zipping around body possessions. The design of the demon is quite freaky.
Ether One
First time playing around with an Oculus Rift. Narrative game set in a seaside town (at least from the demo), about memories and a bit of nostalgia. Very relaxing atmosphere. Not much benefit with the OR, only got to play around with it for 5 min so I asked to play it on mouse and keyboard for 20 more minutes. Examining 3D items is much easier with the mouse. The female narrator is nice. There was a Looking Glass reference which I had to ask the developer about and he nodded. Some slight puzzles like figuring out the code to a safe behind a painting in a bar, so you have to find out the most popular brew and input that, then input a code. The game is out and I’m a sucker for these kind of games, so will have to check it out.
Dungeon of the Endless
Amplitude Studio is 40 people, but only 4 worked on this game. I don’t have much experience with roguelikes, and haven’t really played this kind of tactical tower defense RTS type before. I think I’ve been won over on the tower defense design with this game and Super Exploding Zoo. The game’s out on Steam Early Access, so this was more of a free demo for me. The UI is slick and the lanky pixel art is gorgeous. I tooled up with a melee Metroid girl (name reference and blue armour too) and a ranged dude. There is science research, weapons, and other RPG elements. The game’s all about unlocking doors, which is what the tagline is all about “What’s behind the door?”. Each door you unlock, you should light up the area and then you can set down turrets or mines. You’ve got to get a crystal to the exit, while waves come in. It was tense and fun.
Fract OSC
Honestly, was the most baffling experience I had with a game on the showfloor. I’m not sure if the developer was telling me the game is not finished or just some dude helping out. No tutorial so I wasn’t sure what the objective or end goal was. I just walked around, fell down to many places with no fall damage and just observed the pretty neon world. There was something about moving boxes around and making some beats on a synthesiser which you interact with by right-clicking and going into a TV video scanlines effect. Really cool music, but got a feeling this was a tech demo right now.
Super Exploding Zoo
By the Honeyslug people (Frobisher Says, Hohokum). Pikmin + Lemmings + tower defence, never knew I wanted that combo so bad before! The expressions on these animal bombs are super cute. You move around a zoo, waking up animals, form a posse, and then wreck the shit of some aliens walking in a very tower defence route towards unhatched eggs that you need to protect. Since you’re animal bombs, you will blow up and so the strategy is not to blow all your critters to destroy the aliens. By holding down Triangle, you can set out an Okami-like path that you can make out by yourself with the right analog stick for a single animal to either blow up walls or enemies. This would have been perfect for the PS4 touchpad, but it wasn’t used. Quite simple and charming.
Unrest
I would hesitate to call it a typical RPG but it’s a narrative top-down RPG set in ancient India dealing with historical and socioeconomic ills, made by a couple of Indians, Estonian, and American so like 5 guys internationally who met on Reddit I think. There are loads of dialogue trees, mood stats going up and down, and consequences much like Heavy Rain. There are 4 protagonists whose paths can intertwine. My first one was a young girl who should have been grateful for marrying up a merchant’s son in an arranged marriage but I was defiant and wanted to escape the town on horses. I didn’t make it, and was executed. On to the next, which was another young girl who was struggling to survive and was being forced into begging. I asked the dev and he said it would be 7 chapters, 4-5 hours long. I stopped there because I didn’t want to spoil myself, but yeah super interesting setting and excited to see where it branches. Oh yeah, there are tall snake people called Naga who are thought of lesser beings, presumably from Indian folklore.
Enola
Psychological horror about a girl trying to find her lost girlfriend and you see live flashbacks of a time when her girlfriend was into this really cute boy but it ended up really badly. The implications are quite intense and the in-game storytelling leads to quite a horrific reveal, but the game itself was quite standard and a bit dated in looks and interactions. You don’t open doors, you just transition to the next room like Resident Evil (without a cool door cutscene). It’s a bit creepy, there won’t be any jump scares, so the thrust seems to be the story which is Silent Hill inspired.
Monstrum
Procedural horror set on a ship that you have to escape by getting enough items for a life boat. Made by about 10 Scots from the University of Abertay. I didn’t play much, just asked the dev about Greenlight, procedural horror, and the ship modelling. 2nd game I tried with OR. It was quite early, so we figured out a wallhack when you’re near a wall and peak to the other side where we could track the monster’s route. Jumped a bit when I got noticed and you can imagine how tense a monster walking around in tight corridors would be like.
Gods Will Be Watching
Most of indie game thread people have played this survival adventure demo before, but not in front of a giant 40+inch screen! The lanky pixel art looks great on such a big screen and presumably resolution. Sarah is a liability, she’s close to crying but without her pep talks, the other survivors lose morale points quite quickly and so my Donald ran off into the woods but he’s always a coward. Apparently, dogs can be infected with raw meat too. They should get some cow stomachs.
Helldivers
Capes! Seriously, finally we get a tactical 4-player Starship Troopers-ish top-down shooter. The ruthless design is what makes this tactical. Friendly fire is on which includes your turrets, drops can kill you if you’re under, you have to manually reload when your ammo magazine runs dry, and you can die in just a few hits. You can go prone if you want to avoid fire. I liked sprinting and then dolphin diving for no apparent reason while moving around. The best strategy for our team was to line up in an arc at the same distance so we didn’t hit each other. Positioning yourself is crucial. In the heat of battle, it can be daunting to remember the button codes for dropping down the “Stratagems” (resupply, revive, turret, airstrike, nuke) from your D-pad, a bit like Mortal Kombat or Konami code. Was an awesome experience, would cape twirl again.
Murasaki Baby
First, Tearaway on last EGX. Now, this game is selling me on a PS Vita! Is she called a Babies? Whatever, it’s nearly all touch-controls. You drag her stick arm around to move her, and you can vary the speed of her movement by how long you stretch it. It’s cute as hell dragging her arm too far and seeing her trip over, so bloody adorable. The look is very gothic cartoon, Tim Burton. The balloon she’s holding is like the health, and if that floats away without you bringing it back, game over. You can switch moods or basically wallpapers with two fingers and swiping like a page on the back panel. The most ingenious puzzle is Heavy Rain level of fingers twister. There is fire below and spikes above. I held onto the balloon with my left middlefinger at a certain height and you have to vary it with the fire or spikes, left thumb to move her, and right hand to bat away safety pin flies. The game doesn’t tell you how to do this fingers twister, so it’s up to you!
Alien: Isolation
I had the opposite experience of RPS’ impressions. I found the alien AI a good mix of unpredictable and not frustrating. I didn’t get to test out combat (you can whack your plasma torch with Right Trigger but you lose it when you open the door), the demo ended with the airlock as you’ve seen in footage. I’d highly recommend crouching all the time, not using the flashlight, and keeping the Motion Tracker on ready if you hear any rumbling.
Let me break it down. So, an alien shows up on the front cone of your motion tracker. When it goes further away, since you’re not stupid enough to turn on the flashlight, you’re not sure whether it just moved to the periphery of your tracker or moved up into a vent. If they go up in a vent, they’ll pop out anywhere. If you hide under a table like in a horror movie under the bed, the alien will walk around with you just seeing its feet, and will take its sweet time. So that’s the unpredictable part. If you see it and are in the dark, you can still move around with a cover obstacle. It might change directions, but always have it in your sights, and be patient. That’s the not frustrating part. There’s no point in running even when the game instructs you. There’s no point in standing unless if you’re near the airlock and have to for pulling down the lever, but I died in 2 spectacular fashions because of this: one grabbed from behind, another where I was speared through the chest to which I exclaimed “HOLY SHIT” out loud. I wouldn’t say the AI is revolutionary but quite admirable for a horror stealth game.
This is a game where you’ll want to crank up the resolution and textures because you’ll be staring at the mise en scene if you’re into that kind of environmental storytelling. The attention to detail in the décor is worth ogling over, like the latin american(?) lads mags, the old school astronaut suits, the half-body dead androids, desk clutter, advertising, or chewing gum under the tables. Even though this was the biggest game of the show, I wasn’t disappointed in the least.
