Insomnia #72!

I attended Insomnia 72 during the Easter weekend and I wanted to report back on the stuff I saw and something that annoyed me.

To catch up people who don’t know about Insomnia, this is a gaming festival that is held twice a year in the Birmingham NEC. Its a combination Expo, pro-gaming, game showcase and generally a good time.

Thank you cos-players!

I want to start by giving a big thankyou to all the cos-players at the event. You guys always make the show more fun! I saw people dressed as COD: Ghosts, Overwatch, Genshin Impact, Baulders Gate 3 and making a new appearance this year were Helldivers and Lethal Company employees.

There was a cosplay section at the back of the first hall that seemed to be very popular and I hope to see more of you all at the next show in September.

The Games

So the big names at the show were Escape From Tarkov and Zero Sievert. Neither of which were my thing so I made a beeline to the Indie Section and found some games I will be keeping an eye on:

• BIG JOB – Games Alchemist
  • The sheer concept sold me! A British bank job game set in a dystopian 1980’s UK. Immediately on my Steam Wishlist.
• MYCELIUM GUARDIANS – Spirulena
  • This is a mushroom based city builder. It looks real cosy and I loved the art style.
  • Demo Available on Steam.
• BLOCK STRATEGY – Marc Makes Games
  • A base defence strategy game with destructible terrain in the sense of Minecraft, where you can blow a hole in the ground and place the blocks elsewhere.
• BARNABY’S BOAT – Phil Southam Games
  • The game was about sailing a narrowboat though the zombie apocalypse.
  • Struggling too find anything on the web about this one unfortunately.
• COSMIC COWBOY – Summit
  • Cosmic Cowboy is a strategy game that gave me XCOM gameplay vibes. The art style is very cool, a neon-western wasn’t something I had considered but I loved it.

Big thanks to the Insomnia crew for having this all listed on their website, makes it soo much easier to find the games after the fact!

I had money burning a hole in my pocket…

I recently talked about needing a new PC and in previous years I have seen PC builders at the show with discounts on the show floor. Usually its for a certain subset of their stock but you could find Keyboards, Graphics Cards and whole computers for sale.

This year? barely anything. I expected to see three big players in the space; Scan, OverClockers and CyberPower. CyberPower was just a party bus with nothing for sale, Scan was doing discounts on streaming accessories only and OverClockers wasn’t even there!

Why does no one sell this?

I will admit, I am a dice hoarder. A dice gremlin if you will. I enjoy colourful and interesting dice sets but I have put a cap on buying more sets until I can figure out a problem.

Most people will sell you something to hold a single set of dice. Maybe 2 or 3 if you’re lucky. I have way more sets than that and the common method of storage is just a big ol’ bag. I am not a fan of this. If I want to see my collection or get a particular set I will need to set aside a serious amount of rummaging time.

The people who display dice have these wonderful stands that show off the dice, do they sell them? Nope! A couple of the vendors I spoke with agreed that should be in their product line up and are hoping to get around to it.

Looking forward to next time!

I will be back for September and I hope there will be more fun to be had!

If you attended let me know what games you enjoyed and if anyone can help me with my dice problem, suggestions are greatly apricated!