Eurogamer 2023!

I love to go to various expositions and conventions during the year. A couple of my favourites are Eurogamer and Insomnia. Here is my thoughts from EGX 2023.

The main highlight of any show of this kind is the games on show. The new Call Of Duty was doing serious business as they had queues lasting 90-mins if the signs were to believed. Also the Sega booths showing both the new sonic game but also the Persona 5 Tactica and Persona 3 Reload booth were packed.

The Games!

The highlight every year is the Indy and smaller games. I have some I would like to call out as they seem like my jam:

• Star Trucker looked like a lot of fun for me. Got some serious Hardspace Shipbreaker vibes from it.
• Deep Space Tavern reminds me of multiple business management sims with a great art style.
• Stronghold: Definitive Edition. This is a series I have wanted to get into and with the release of the Definitive Edition this year I just might.
• Potion Permit. I don’t know what the name is for this genre of games, but I love them.
• Endzone: A world Apart. I love me a good city builder and having it based in a post-apocalyptic setting is even better.
• Astra Protocol 2. I didn’t know about the first but this one caught my eye and needs investigating.
• ROBOBEAT. A very stylish rhythm shooter.

If you are a PC and would like to look at Demos, live streams and possibly buy some of the titles shown at EGX, Steam has a page for it here.

Expanding the community

There was a booth dedicated to custom controllers which has some very wild games. Paddy and myself ended up playing three. The first used a pair of wheels that controlled a slightly more elaborate game of Pong. It was a hell of a thing to control as one wheel did left right and the other did up down. The second was a game called Firestarter I think where the controller looked like a drumstick jammed into a plank. The controller acted like the games namesake and to fire you needed to rub the stick back and forth, but to move you character you turned it to one side or the other. Finally Paddy played a game with a headset and telegraph button in a suitcase. The idea was you used Morse code to instruct artillery shells to sink boats.

I noticed that there was much more table top exhibitors this year. Not only was there a sizeable Dice breaker zone and D&D zone but also retailers and sessions too! I am glad to see there being more diversity in the line up at the show as it just makes it more enjoyable.

Retail Therapy

However I have noticed an issue with the retail portions of these shows. There is a tendency to see the same faces. For people like me it makes these sections of the shows very bland. Now I’m not going to blame the sellers about this, given the number of people in the retail zone of the show they must be doing a roaring trade. But I would like to see more diversity of goods.

Some issues

The protest from Just Stop Oil on Sunday aside there are some issues with the way the show is run and if EGZ are reading I have some feedback. Firstly, the app is arse. No two way about it, especially the map section. Trying to manipulate the picture to show the floor plan is annoying, I am viewing this on a phone, rotate and use the screen properly! Still on the app (and website) why isn’t there a listing of the exhibitors and / or the games shown? It would be useful and would help get some of the smaller games more views which I think helps the industry. Finally, why is it that when I went to get my ticket at midday I had to walk a mile snaking back and forth when there was no queue?

See you next year

Overall I enjoyed my visit and will be going back next year. Assuming there will be an EGX in Birmingham at the NEC I will defiantly be going to that too.