We have had the recurring joke that the Day of the Devs It is the “good event” after a Summer Game Fest almost doomed to disappoint (we’ll talk about that; another time, if you like). I confess that this year it didn’t seem like it to me, despite everything; There was no shortage of interesting games, no shortage of good ideas, but the truth is that there were not too many of them nor was the contrast, in my opinion, as marked as other times.
If when commenting on the five Guerrilla Collective games it was inevitable to emphasize the enormous number of games, here things change; By its very nature, Day of the Devs not only has a significantly shorter total duration but the density of games is also reduced, to leave room for developers (it is their day after all!) to comment their projects. There were twenty games in total, in just over an hour. These are the five that I most want to highlight.
The five of (L5D) is the series of articles in which we will list, five by five, the most outstanding games of June Jugón; Each event, whether there are ten or a hundred games, will be summarized in the five that have caught our attention the most. Do you notice any absence? Tell us what your 5Ds are.
Zoochosis
The first time I saw Zoochosis It was in March of this year, through a press release; The giraffe caught my attention, obviously, and in general the tone of the game, much harder and darker than it seems at first glance. I moved on with my life and half-forgot about it until yesterday, and it was a pleasure to rediscover this horror game about a zoo maintenance person who, night after night, sees how something makes animals behave in progressively stranger ways. , until reaching frankly shocking points. The thing about the giraffe that I said before, and how obvious it seemed to me? I think yesterday’s video (you have it on these lines) explains itself.
UFO 50
Last night was, if I’m not mistaken, the longest look we’ve had so far at this UFO 50, the latest from Derek Yu and Jon Perry, and it’s easy to be left speechless when looking at this ambitious collection of fifty (50) (fifty, I mean! It’s not a mistake) games developed by a fictional studio over eight years. , the same duration as the UFO 50 project. There are fifty complete games, of very different genres, all of them designed in the style of the time in which they were supposedly developed in the UFO 50 fiction (although, they acknowledged yesterday, with current sensibilities; it is celebrated) to document the history of its creators, a study “dark but ahead of its time.” I’m speechless, I already say. Amazing.
Yesterday was taken advantage of to finally give a release date: September 18, currently only on Steam.
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure
We saw this Arranger in a recent Indie World, so maybe you have it in mind: a puzzle game in which to move around the world you do not move your character but the world itself, rearranging the boxes that make up the scenarios to advance and solve the puzzles that are presented to you. Yesterday served to see in more detail the type of puzzles and situations that they seem to be creating with this particular mechanic, and also to put a face to part of their team: there is Nicolás Recabarren, Argentine designer known for Ethereal, David Hellman, the Braid artist, and Nick Suttner, who in addition to running this studio also works at Panic and makes the Eggplant podcast (highly recommended, by the way, and at one time largely dedicated to commenting on Spelunky). Completing the quartet is also Argentine Tomás Batista, who in addition to Ethereal also worked on the phenomenal Fidel: Dungeon Rescue, by Daniel Benmergui.
Petal Runner
For a moment it may seem that this Petal Runner It is more Pokémon than it ends up being, probably because of the Game Boy-type graphics; I liked each idea that I saw in yesterday’s video more, and I confess that the game caused me some rejection at first. In the end, it seems like an eminently narrative game in which we follow the story of a character who reaches adulthood while dealing with his identity ambition to be part of the Petal Runners, a group of professional HanaPets trainers, something like a mix between pokémons and tamagotchis. There’s a lot of mini-game play, an open world that feels very dense and alive, and a lot of lovely detail.
Karma: The Dark World
On the border of what could be out of place at an event like Day of the Devs was this Karma: The Dark World, from the Chinese studio Pollard. It is a first-person horror game, visually very convincing and with a tone that was described in the presentation as “orwellian and lynchinano»; go two legs for a bench, we could say. The visual ideas, with planes of chilling symmetry, recursive corridors and all kinds of macabre surveillance devices, are very interesting; It will be tracked, although at the moment it does not have a release date or window.
From June 7 to 12, 2024, a series of events and presentations will help us find out what the rest of the year, next year and who knows how many more years have in store for us. In the absence of E3, good is the June Jugón; Click here to see all the content that we publish about the major festival of video games.
