Today was the first day of the fifteenth UK Games Expo. After the cancellation two years ago and the subdued event last year, it was almost back to normal this year. On arrival, outside the NEC, there were vikings in their camp, playing Hnefatafl with their visitors.
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It seems blinging games has been a thing for over a millennia, as the vikings were proudly showing off their pimped out copy. Inside, the halls were busy, but not overcrowded, though of course this was Friday, traditionally the “quiet day”.
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Just inside the door was the Burley Games stand with a shelf of variants of Take it Easy!—an unwanted reminder of playing games remotely through Teams for eighteen months, albeit as one of the games that worked quite well in that format.
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Nearby was the Oink Games stand, showing off the newly Spiel des Jahres nominated, SCOUT and just round the corner, the staff from the Oxford-based Osprey Games were obviously delighted that their game Cryptid had received a Kennerspiel nomination and were keeping their fingers crossed that it would go one further.
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Hall One was also the home to Fire Tower, a clever puzzle game with the tag line, “fight fire with fire”.
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As well as a very smiley sheep from Catan, there were also a lot of designers about, including Tony Boydell, Alan Paul, Andy Hopwood, Bez Shahriari, Rob Harper and Matt Dunstan, all sharing their games and chatting with gamers.
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There were a number of interesting little British games, including Daring Dustbunnies and Deckchairs On The Titanic, which were on neighbouring stands, while Surprised Stare were selling a special tribute to the festive weekend called Corgi Dash (based on the 1986 Spiel des Jahres winner, Heimlich & Co.).
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Universities of Warwick, Chester and Canterbury were all present, variously advertising their courses in game design and demonstrating how gaming can be used as a learning device. One Warwick (IATL) computer science student showed a game he designed to demonstrate the Turing Test and how people are poor at understanding randomness.
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There were also previews of upcoming games. These included Namiji, a game which has the same theme and uses the same basic mechanic as Tokaido, but increases the complexity with more challenging steps along the way. Namiji was demonstrated at Essen in 2019, but like so many things, fell foul of the global pandemic in the interim.
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The new Ticket to Ride game which will be released later this year was also available to see and play. It is based round the city of San Francisco and features street cars and follows the successful format of a new map and a slight rules tweak.
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Aside from games, there were also a lot of stands selling books, costumes, props, and scenery—these days, the distinctive aroma of singed wood pervades the aisles of games conventions as an homage to the laser cutter, which is used to make everything from wooden boxes, to houses, coasters and puzzles.
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All in all, the return to face-to-face conventions was a date to remember. UK Games Expo continues until 4pm Sunday 6th June.
boardGOATS 