Hello gamers. How did you like E3 this year? Do you think the event is pointless now that it went online? Or did you think it was already pointless since 2016 when they opened up to the public? Or since 2013 when Nintendo and EA pulled out of the event? Or since 2007 when they closed to the public, as they were actually originally open to everyone before that? Or maybe E3 was never good? If it's hard to pick a stance with such a range of options, I suggest a dice roll - however, this is not actually the point of this blogpost. Rather, I'd like to brag that I've watched every single trailer aired as part of the extended "Summer Conference" series of events. I'd further like to self-indulge by linking stuff that I found interesting in some way or another and share some brief thoughts. Maybe you'll also find some of these games interesting - in any case, here they are in somewhat chronological order.
The Legend of Wright
So this first trailer is actually indicative of a trend among those indie collective conferences - almost none of the trailers announced new games. They were just a random collection of trailers curated by whatever criteria, very few of them showing anything new or exciting. In fact a lot of the devs straight up just submitted old trailers that've been online forever - this one even ends with outdated "2020" release date (and no the game's not out yet). However, despite trying my best to keep up with releases from every section of the industry, a lot of cool stuff is passing me by - so the "Summer of Games" was an opportunity to see stuff I missed. The Legend of Wright caught my attention with its arstyle and interface, presenting everything as a sort of pen-and-paper game. Not even your regular tabletop RPG, but rather the game master just draws what's going on and updates it based on player's actions, sort of imitating a video game screen. Idk if this is still a popular activity among gamer kids (or if it was ever half as widespread as I imagine), but that's the association this short trailer brings to my mind. As for this game, I'm not sure if it's really an "RPG" - seems like more of a puzzle platformer adventure, with meta rules of the game serving as obstacles. I'm not sure whether I'll try it out, but I'd definitely watch an extended gameplay because it looks super cool.
Phantom Abyss
Ever since Mirror's Edge came out in 2008, I've been trying to keep my eyes on first person platformers space. There's been some nice curiosities over the years like SEUM and to lesser extent Cloudbuilt (which controls similarly but is TPP) or Ghostrunner (which puts more focus on combat) but also a lot of duds, and whenever I really want to feel that perfect parkour flow, I end up going back to that original ME. This year's E3 had two games to offer in this niche, Run Die Run Again and Phantom Abyss, and I found the latter a bit more interesting. Its levels are procedurally generated and when you enter them, you run alongside ghosts of everyone who came before you but failed to reach the end - moreover, each level can only be completed by one person, so in theory it creates this neat social experience where level's prestige naturally rises with each attempted run and only one person gets to capture the glory of finishing it. Running, jumping and climbing is supplemented by swinging and pulling objects with a whip, and it all seems to fit pretty well together and offer something very unique. I haven't tried it yet - after watching some gameplays I'm worried about the tempo of movement, but I'll check back and see if it gets critical acclaim.
KungFu Kickball
I used to talk to a game critic who was really annoyed by the success of Rocket League, because they wished that games would be more creative in thinking up abstract and unreal sports rather than just adding twists to real life ones like "football, but with cars". I on the contrary always loved the idea of spicing up existing sports - whether that's racing with item pickups, volleyball with guns, frisby with anime powerups, or plain old quidditch, making something fantastical but rooted in something familiar always seemed like a source of great game ideas to me. KungFu Kickball mostly reminds me of Lethal League, being played on 2D plane and with the same focus on positioning yourself relative to the ball and hitting it relatively to your opponent. It also has a sweet cartoony trailer made by good folk at Exit 73 Studios. It's a fun idea for a game and I'd be interested in checking out how it plays, though I hope there's some variety because after looking up some gameplays it unfortunately seems like it might play out very same-y across multiple rounds.
Soup Pot
So this seems to be a fairly simple and slightly-budget-looking cooking game, not quite what I'm looking for but close enough for it to at least get my attention. But what really gets it on the list is that I also saw trailers for Hot Pot For One as well as Venba, and those three games seem to offer an entire spectrum of soup-making game types, from simulation soup-making to narrative soup-making experiences. As I recently discovered that it's hard to find an interesting cooking game on mobile, maybe I'll turn my gaze towards one of these instead.
A Musical Story
OK this is the one game on the list that was a giant surprise for me and I'm absolutely stoked about it. It's a rhythm game seemingly telling a story of a psychedelic rock trio during the height of the hippie era - drugs, music, friendship, love. It seems to go in the long abandoned niche of rhythm games which Parappa originally put on the map, focused on telling a story rather than chasing scores, using all original music that serves as a soundtrack to the tale, based around short call-and-response sections that you need to perform perfectly to progress. Music's great, art's great, mood's great, I think this is a fantastic game and I'm buying it day one. I highly recommend checking out the demo.
Vokabulantis
Oh hey I backed this on Kickstarter. I'm just happy we're getting two stop-motion adventure games with this and Harold Halibut, I don't really know what to expect from either of them gameplay and story-wise, but they look great, and as an animation fan I'm obligated to support any projects utilizing interesting visual techniques.
Unbeatable
This looks a lot like Muse Dash, with the two-lane design, the types of enemies and obstacles used and how player deals with them, I don't think it's unfair to call it a reskin (although devs claim they came up with this template independently?). In any case, Muse Dash uses icky electronic music, and Unbeatable uses glorious 00s alternative rock, so in that case I'm unashamed in taking the reskin. I was very close to backing this on kickstarter too actually, but I restrained myself due to the fact that the devs failed to provide the demo "[white label]" - they promised to release it on like day 2 of the campaign and then kept delaying it until after it ended. But it's out now and it feels good to play, I like the songs, I dig the aesthetic, I think this might turn out to be a very solid rhythm game, especially for those of us that hate icky electronic music and thus might be a little starved in the post-guitar-hero era.
Wavebreak
Skating games are in a weird place right now. They had a brief period worth celebrating when we got the great THPS1+2 remake and the long awaited Skate 4 announcement, but then the THPS dev Vicarious Visions has been disbanded and its staff moved to work on the Diablo 2 remake. It's surprising that there still are very few takes on a skateboarding game outside of those two franchises - there's the 2D OlliOlli series, two EA's Skate followers in Skater XL and Session, and Skatebird which still isn't out and the demo footage doesn't look very promising. The one I was most looking forward to was Ollie-Oop which looked to be more in THPS4/Underground style of games with big open levels filled with quests, but it has been pretty much radio silent for a long time now. But out of nowhere, Wavebreak appeared - it's technically not a skating game, but rather animals on motorboats doing tricks and grinds. But it looks pretty cool, and based on gameplay footage it seems like they were able to replicate that arcade-y feel of Tony Hawk games while also adding some of their own flair with gun combat and a weird something-wave aesthetic.
The Big Con
Holy shit guys the 90s are back! And that's a good thing!
Unpacking
Something about this idea is just inherently very satisfying, filling out this virtual world with things and trying to figure out what goes where, I feel like I always wanted this type of game and was happy to finally get it. What I didn't expect was that the devs would just release this unpacking toy... And add nothing to it. No secrets to discover, no systems to explore, no mechanics to learn, no optional goals (like idk "place all dolls on shelves" or "find an unconventional place to place this"). Or in fact just levels getting weirder and weirder, spaces where you have to shift your preconception of what a living space is and figure out novel ways to store your things... Idk my design brain is just looking for gameplay ideas but the dev seems to want this to be more of a casual, relaxing, perhaps even iyashikei experience, and all I can say to that "shame it's so close to being something very much for me, but ended up taking a left turn where I really wanted it to go right".
AudioClash: Battle of the Bands
A literal music battle has always seemed appealing to me but it's pretty rarely explored - I can only think of the cartoon Freefonix and Scott Pilgrim vs The World off the top of my head, so AudioClash immediately drew my attention. Unfortunately, it's in one of the few genres I just can't stand - an autobattler. So uh idk, maybe I'll watch it on stream for half an hour if the host is entertaining, or read war stories like "I've upgraded my amp and changed the key signature during the bridge and finally managed to make it to platinum"?
Akatori
I don't have great luck with these indie pixelart metroidvanias, I feel like they are generally unimaginative and by the numbers, "just make some cute art, a few dozen levels, arrange them randomly, put some gates and key abilities and it'll sell". However, this one has staff-based combat and staffs are cool, and the promo art is cute.
Aragami 2
I haven't played the first one as it looked somewhat stiff, but this one immediately made me think "woo Tenchu is back!" I... really don't have to add much, I'm starved for a good stealth game so really hoping that this plays half as well as it looks on the trailer.
Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator
This game has a really nice flow to it - harvest herbs, brew potions, sell them, buy other ingredients, repeat. Paired with this nice paper-like aesthetic and old-timey music, it's just a very pleasant experience, though I'm a little worried about how much mileage would I be able to get out of it based on the demo. Still worth keeping an eye on.
KeyWe
I'm not entirely sure what this game will actually play like. My guess is that it's gonna be similar to Overcooked, performing simple tasks in coop with focus on increasing efficiency, but perhaps with wider variety of activities? In any case I'm very curious about these cute birds.
Just Dance 2022
Something about this series just makes me smile. People like dancing and Ubisoft just makes these simple dancing games for as many platforms as they can - the ideal relationship between developer and customer base (although it looks like 2020 was the last installment that came out for the Wii, so the series did lose a few goodwill points). It's stylish, it works, and makes me wonder if Guitar Hero/Rock Band could've avoided the burnout if they stuck to yearly installments with carefully curated song lists instead of just releasing infinite DLCs.
Naraka: Bladepoint
An interesting looking battle royale with fast paced combat mixing guns and melee and magic powers, reminding me of the good ol' GunZ The Duel. I'm kinda worried that it won't play as well as one could imagine based on trailers, but it would be really nice if it did.
Tracks of Thought
Wholesomeness propaganda, some sort of RPG card adventure game where you beat meanness with niceness. I'm not convinced it has legs to work as a full-fledged product and whether its preachiness wouldn't get tiring, but it did get my attention, so maybe this idea has some legs and potential?
Shredders
It's been a while since the last snowboarding game I can think of, and this one looks pretty slick. Based on that trailer I wonder if we can expect any of the multiplayer features of like a mass of players going down the same hill simultaneously like the upcoming Ubisoft game Riders Republic (which will also have snowboards)? Looking more into it I learned it's also doing that double-stick scheme where one controls the body and one controls the board, and also doesn't seem like the gameplay will be too goal-oriented so this might not be really my jam (unless they are hiding that more arcade-y stuff from the previews for now). But it looks neat enough for me to want to give it a shout.
Dodgeball Academia
Gotta love this artstyle, cute, energetic, cartoony, with these nice really nice color palettes that I'd say are deceptively desaturated thanks to good value choices and hue combinations? ...um, anyway, remember what I said about taking real sports but adding some fantasy elements to them? I think dodgeball might work really well for this as a sort of asynchronous combat game that isn't like a super popular pro sport in real life. Also the gameplay footage gives this sense of Mega Man Battle Network-style mix of real time and turn-based combat where each team only stays on their side of the field, and I love the school setting, and I like the idea of RPG elements factoring into forming and training your squads. The more I think about it the higher I am on this game, really hoping that it delivers on all the promises I made it give to me inside my head even though in reality it never did.
Shashingo
Hey I know that word, it means "picture" in Japanese. I know that because I did a duolingo course and then was too lazy to do more self-study from textbooks or use less gamified apps. This looks like a cute and fun learning method for word memorization, though I wonder how effective and efficient would it be.
Gigabash
Powerstone-like combat with kaijus and destructible terrain? That looks pretty rad. After LastFight didn't quite nail the feel that people were looking for, I can only hope that Gigabash manages to do just that.
eSports Boxing Club
This announcement came at a good time - based on Big Rumble Boxing Creed Champions gameplays it seems like more of a Virtua Fighter style game, and I think boxing game fans prefer these more uniquely boxing games with unique movement and striking systems. Also, it's called eSports Boxing Club, gotta love it for the title alone.
Severed Steel
I think any fan of oldschool FPSes or fast action games should give this a try. It's a shooter where you're pretty fragile, but you can't get hit while you're performing stunts like wallrunning or transitioning from jumps to slides. Hit opponents, take their weapons, finish them off, run off a wall, activate slowmo, headshot some opponents, jump to another wall to continue being unhitable. Good futuristic aesthetic that plays well to this style of gameplay. Not for everyone but I think it's something that many people are looking for even if they don't know it yet.
Tinykin
What mostly caught my eye is that this is the second game in recent memory after Demon Turf to do 2D sprites set against a 3D world with a freely moving camera, which is a gimmick I'd probably hate if it was overused, but for now I find it rather charming. Genre-wise, Tinykin appears to be a Pikmin-like with the same microcosmos setting, though focusing more on human-lived spaces and perhaps more on adventure puzzling and perhaps foregoing combat?
Toodee and Topdee
This is a really weird puzzle-platformer with shifting perspectives where one character runs across a top-down 2D plane and the other across side-scroller-like 2D plane. I was also initially excited for Super-Paper-Mario-like Neko Ghost, Jump!, but it doesn't seem puzzle focused, so perhaps this cute title will fill that void instead.
Coromon
So in most aspects this is a very blatant Pokemon clone, but exploration and puzzle solving with use of powers made me think of Golden Sun, and that's a very enticing combination. I'll be looking forward to how it all comes together.
Limited Run Games
To close this post I wanted to shout out Limited Run Games who have been doing probably my favorite E3 conferences since 2018. They are a bit Devolver-like, comedic and pre-recorded, but LRG humor has just landed much better for me, I enjoy their early-youtube-quirkiness more than Devolver's adult-swimness. With that said, I also appreciate that these madlads are making re-releases of SNES and Genesis games in 2021, as well as releasing the original version of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood for the TurboDuo in English, and re-releasing Plumbers Don't Wear Ties for modern platforms. Godspeed you beautiful bastards.
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