Today I worked at the Eurogamer Expo helping on the Pixel Lab Indie Games Arcade (lots of Indie PC games), helping David there.

A quick run through of the games in no particular order; War Twat was a unique, completely over the top “space war shooter”. Incredible stuff, insane how it was made in such a short amount of time too. Try it at least a few times, once you learn you can hold fire down. The top score was over 1700, with a lot of attempts (over 600…must have been more, but that was when the record was set I think). It was overlooked a lot of the time, no controls are listed on the start screen so we taped some down nearby in the late afternoon to help.

Braid, originally beta’ed on the PC I think, was there in it’s time manipulating with platform elements and some-kinda-crazy-story-I-guess glory. Of course, it’s hard to not play a great deal of it or get confused by the later levels if you haven’t played the earlier ones, but people did persevere in trying it.

World Of Goo is, of course, as at GDC, a lot of fun if you get it. I’m personally pretty terrible at “Lemmings” games, of which this is a toned down version of essentially – you get different goos, which stick together to get around obstacles. I know one guy completed two chapters in one go while there, that’s a lot of playing. I should try it myself some more.

Off Road Velociraptor Safari is crazy-silly. You can play it yourself too, so give it a try. It’s pretty silly 🙂 Did I say it was silly yet? 😀

Psychosomnium is, as it says on the tin, pretty psycho. As described on the card, it’s part of the Masocore games, and if people don’t get a few tips even the first few screens of the game are pretty daunting in a “think outside the norm” elements. Interesting to finish though (a great parody of some platformers and elements in them too), and recommended so highly by one of the other Pixel-Lab guys that he wants more, more! More grueling levels, anything, just more of it! Must be worth a try (I tried, and failed some bits without a guide a while back, hehe. I fail 🙂 ).

Multiwinia was there, LANed up too (and even got a visit by their now-2-strong PR department, I got a red Darwinian they left 😀 (see my pictures). The game itself is defiantly heavy on the micro in some respects, but does I am told afford some more higher level strategy. I’m not sure I’d cope with it to be honest, it seems a very hard core game overall but well suited to those who understand how to order the Darwinians around efficiently.

Machinarium was, to put it bluntly, brilliant looking. It’s still in beta, so I forgive it, but the puzzles, while not unforgiving in a thinking capacity, hindered you a lot by not showing you what pieces were selectable or what actions were possible without anything but a cursor change. Plenty of “try every combination” gameplay (and carefully checking pixels at times too). It works pretty damn well though, I expect the final game to be much more expanded (there was 7 levels in this beta) and certainly more polished, so it should be good for adventure people (quite a few enjoyed the game despite getting stuck too, which is awesome).

Finally, Plain Sight needs an entry of it’s own. A 4 man team has made an impressive fighting game, which does keep you interested in playing more well beyond what I would have thought. They were looking for feedback before a public PC beta (sign up now!). I first heard about this at Alice’s Wonderland blog, and it looks even more awesome and impressive in real life. They were using Xbox 360 controllers to make it easier to manage, but informed me it was built as a PC game, so the mouse and keyboard work excellently, which is great! I’ll try the PC beta, hopefully once they sort out some of the niggling problems (telling apart the different players apart from their nicknames for starters, possibly by using colour coding instead of altering the colour for how much multiplier a player has built up, and having the colour get lighter with more points) it’ll be utterly unstoppable! The most popular thing since it of course had 5 player LAN multiplayer, and all the team were there helping people out with it.

There was some gubbins I got too – apart from a Darwinian, I got a Lionhead yoyo to keep me entertained while I didn’t play videogames, and others got some weird stuff – like Saints Row “fake tattoos” and a blue beret (I forget the game…) – see right! See my gallery for a few more pictures, mainly of people playing the indie games.

I need to check out the Expo tomorrow – Mirrors Edge (although I want to play it on PC, it just looks awesome to be honest, this being an EA game too so I’ve gotta be wary of DRM) and possibly Left-4-Dead (although I think it only is being shown on Xbox 360). I want to visit the career fair too, get some advice and see if any graduate programming jobs are available anywhere. We’ll see what tomorrow is like, just before GameCity starts, which also should be awesome!