A Few Hours at The Vancouver Game Expo

For those of us who preside on Vancouver Island, it was seen for a long time that any short term trip to the mainland was a big deal. To see what the big city and beyond had to offer was an investment in time and money, and a look into what the rest of the country was doing after the harrowing journey across the Strait of Georgia. This was once something that was a major undertaking, and doubly so if that included going across the Peace Arch Border Crossing when the Canadian Dollar was above par to the American. And though that feeling has gone away to an extent as accessibility between The Island's major cities and Vancouver or Calgary has increased, there will always be this sense for those that live on Island Time to make the most of what time you have on Turtle Island's main body.

It was a full weekend for me in Vancouver from Friday night through to Sunday evening, and Saturday's main fixture was visiting the inaugural Vancouver Game Expo at the Roundhouse Community Centre. It was an amazing event; showing off the best of the independent developer scene that Hollywood North has to offer with fantastic art vendors sharing their labour of love with us attendees. Plenty of new and upcoming games to try, with amazing people creating them with a level of care and joy that cannot be understated. Everyone I talked to at the event was a joy and Vancouver is a fantastic place to make your way in the industry: with the likes of the British Columbia Institute of Technology and Emily Carr University incredible hubs for fostering local talent, alongside those who are self-taught and made their way on their own terms and that shows in the games that were on display. It was an amazing event put on by a all-volunteer staff. Here are a few games I checked out and some impressions from them.

Thrive

The first game I tried was along the far right wall of the main exhibition hall, flanked by two of the most successful games and developers in the hall: those being Red Nexus Games and Brace Yourself Games of Peglin and Crypt of The Necrodancer fame respectively. Between them was the three person team at Hakoon Games showing off their first game, still deep in development called Thrive.

Thrive is a side-scrolling Metroidvania adventure game that is all about movement and platforming, where the main character Sophia quickly finds herself on a magical adventure in a bid to solve the mystery of her grandpa's disappearance and help her grandma's garden grow. You quickly gain access to the game's two main movement elements, being a boost jump possible in all eight directions and a parasol that allows you to glide across large gaps. You can wall jump too, like in Metroid, and it all comes together to where Thrive was a blast to play when you get up to speed. A lot of time was put making sure the movement felt just right and all the initial challenges you faced showed off the limits of the tools at your disposal. There was no consequences to messing up a platform sequence, you just went back to the start of the board with added knowledge of what to do. This is a game that is going to be a very fun speedrun when completed, and I found myself trying to maximize my relative momentum once I got my sea-legs under me with the very positive feedback the game gave to the player at a visual level. You were never second guessing what Sophia was capable of, and that is a key factor in making any platformer as good as it can be.

It's an adorable adventure that's going to be a treat to take at a comfortable pace to enjoy the fantastic art and characters you will interact with. Of all the games I tried, Thrive was my favorite of the expo and will be one to look out for in the future when it shows up on digital platforms to wishlist and purchase.

Electro Bop Boxing League

One of the things I realized with an event like the Vancouver Gaming Expo is that seeing people actually play games that you haven't seen or put much thought into will grab your attention in ways that seeing a game passively scrolling through the discover feed on Steam of the Epic Games Store simply can't. Seeing someone locked into a game you've never seen before grabbed my curiosity more than once, and was a significant factor in getting me to try Electro Bop Boxing League after I realized what was actually going on.

Developed solo by Developer Dob and released in April, Electro Bop Boxing League is an auto-fighter where you are maintaining the operations of a giant robot taking part in some old-timey boxing matches through matching the beats of the electro-swing playing in the background to maintain optimal operation of your robot. The actual beats you're timing with are very distinct within the audio balance and there is a degree of forgiveness in getting the timing right, though a missed beat when trying to activate a special attack could be decisive in a tight match. Each robot has an array of special attacks that are loaded into it's system with three punch cards inserted on the beat, while maintaining the basic operations of it's arm and legs as well as controlling the operating temperature in the heat of battle. While you don't directly control how your robot attacks, you can manually dodge to the left or right and you need to be cognizant of the situation at hand so you don't get tunnel vision maintaining the operation of your robot. Between rounds you do get the chance to repair your robot using a healing beam that you can point and shoot to parts of your robot that got damaged in battle, and your robot can be in a offensive, defensive, or balanced philosophy which can come in handy if you're on the ropes and just need to make it to the end of the round.

Just from doing the tutorial fight, which was recommended by Dob, I could already tell that this is a super cool video game. Cel-shading and steampunk is such a good pairing visually and the original electro-swing music composed for the game is such a treat to see used to it's fullest ability in a video game with the overall audio design being top notch. There's a full career mode in the game too, and the capability to fully customize your robot and the crew piloting it as you go through boxing tournaments. There is a remarkable amount of depth going on under the hood, and one of the coolest premises for a video game I've seen in a long time.

A auto-fighter is not going to be for everyone, but Electro Bop Boxing League has the ideal premise and world for it to thrive; and any game where you get to do some Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots is just good fun.

iRacing Arcade

It's little surprise that of course I had to check out the only racing game that was featured in the main exhibition hall, this is a blog exploring the world of virtual racing after all. It's one of the biggest games within the genre in development right now, and one that recently had the announcement that it's release had been pushed back to sometime in February after originally scheduled to be released this week. But it wasn't doom and gloom when I finally made it around to Original Fire Games's table to give iRacing Arcade a try.

The playable demo featured a FIA Formula 4 car in a time trial around the Tsukuba Circuit with a top 10 lap times at the show being put on a leaderboard. It's the ideal car and track pairing for such an occasion to not intimidate new players, and get seasoned racing game players to understand how this is a different animal than Circuit Superstars that preceded it through it's move away from being in a top-down perspective. With that in mind, iRacing Arcade drives really good. It's the other side of the coin to the demo and initial launch driving style of Formula Legends in terms of how a kid would drive their Hot Wheels around their carpet race track. The early handling style of Formula Legends was stiff and wanted precision on corner entry to mid-apex and wide turning arcs, like a kid using their finger tips on top of the diecast car to drive and steer it. iRacing Arcade drives more like a kid that's gripping the diecast car, with their thumb on one side and rest of their fingers grabbing the other side, and then sliding around corners by twisting their wrist to get the rear end to whip around. The three hairpins at the Tsukuba Circuit are the ideal track to put that into practice, and the middle hairpin in particular shows the emphasis on gliding through the corners and carrying as much momentum as the car will allow from middle apex to the exit of the corner. It's very natural feeling, and works well with the style of tight and fun racing that Original Fire Games knows how to create.

Before and after my turn at iRacing Arcade where I went provisionally into the top five on the leaderboard, I got a chance to talk with lead programmer John Werner and talked about working with iRacing on the publishing deal for the game, working with some of the other developers that are fully under the iRacing umbrella and that recently announced release delay. This delay is about making sure the game is right and is the way the four-person team want it to be, as was echoed by iRacing EVP Steve Myers in the announcement of the delay. It's not a direct response to the disastrous launches of both Rennsport and Project Motor Racing, because iRacing Arcade is already in a fantastic state so close to release. This is about giving the team the chance to do the fine tuning and refinement that will make all the difference, especially when it comes to making sure the Career Mode is everything it can be for a light-hearted take on the world of road racing.

It was an honor and a pleasure to talk with John before going across the aisle to check out GRIDHACK, and I left knowing that this upcoming racing game is in incredibly good hands and will be worth that little bit more of a wait.

I only had about three hours to make it through the Vancover Game Expo, parking in metro Vancouver being what it is, but every game I did try was a joy to play. Street Uni X is a old school extreme sports game in the best way possible; with real pro unicycle riders as your choice of riders, pristine 32-bit graphics and fantastic level design including the VR Missions-inspired tutorial world. PinPow combines a turn-based RPG with pinball being how you dictate your turn in an encounter goes and it was very satisfying to get the ball rolling early on your character build in this fantasy roguelike experience. The aforementioned GRIDHACK uses nonogram, or Picross, puzzles as your encounters in a sci-fi world with the puzzles functioning as computer hacks. It's a great way to put the pressure on the player while providing a direct way for the game to progress in challenge as the nonogram grids build in size to fit the story-driven adventure. There were many more games on offer across the whole spectrum of whats possible in gaming, and I cannot wait to come back next year to see what else there is in store.

Vancouver has a rich history in the western world of video gaming: being the longtime home of one of the biggest subsidiaries of Electonic Arts with other major publishers having teams based out of greater Vancouver area, including the likes of Rockstar and Capcom. But a lot of those big names have abdicated their place as real movers and shakers in terms of developing titles that moved the needle in the industry or simply closed down; included in that is Need For Speed which saw the franchise moved away from Burnaby, where it was developed for fifteen years. It's opened the door for a new generation of indie developers to make the space their own, with Crypt of the Necrodancer and Peglin the poster children of that; games made by small, tight-knit teams from the region that showed what's possible when the love of the game is at the forefront of what gets made. And that was something that made the very first Vancouver Game Expo incredibly special, and is the atmosphere I hope is kept for years to come.