Jay Weaver's Belated Highlights From A Day At EGX (28.10.24)

EGX (Eurogamer Expo) is an event held in the UK and Germany that uplifts independent creatives and brings people together to shine a light on games that can’t usually get the spotlight on their own. I approve of the plan, so, for those who couldn't attend, here are the games that I found most memorable from a day at EGX.

Boolantics

Talking to the developers at Bool Studios revealed what feels obvious from watching just a few minutes of gameplay or the trailer of Boolantics: the game started to come together when people with a love for logic gates and Balatro (LocalThunk, 2024) decided to team up. In Boolantics, we the player apply a randomly attributed deck of cards (the logic gates) to the game mat (the circuit) to reach a designated score threshold at the end of the completed circuit. The game caught my attention as the team chose to flaunt its simple but effective art style with a CRT monitor. After spending some time with it, it was the versatile but simple roguelike design that kept me hooked. Like all games at EGX, I couldn’t spend too much time with this one – which is probably for the best because I already looked like a fool – but I look forward to having the opportunity to sit down with pen, paper, and a calculator to optimise and drain Boolantics of all that it has to offer.

SoundCaster

Holding on to the imagery of me looking like a fool, I’ll keep this recommendation short because it made me feel utterly ridiculous. I didn’t get to make much of a dent in the experience crafted by SoundCasterStudios because I suck at games, especially rhythm games. Nevertheless, it’d be remiss of me not to mention that Soundcaster is an extremely challenging and polished rhythm game that combines the input of Guitar Hero (Harmonix, 2005) with the dodging of Everhood (Chris Nordgren and Jordi Roca, 2021). With an engaging art style and an extremely memorable soundtrack, I’d like to highlight a promising game for its highs, even when its lows – mostly just my inability to focus on multiple things at once – are not for me. SoundCasterStudios has something good on its hands that stuck with me despite my failings – I just hope that none of the developers remember me.

Robes & Wrinkles 

Robes & Wrinkles from Tombstone Studios is a physics-based first-person shooter in which your single firearm is Half-Life 2’s (Valve Corporation, 2004) gravity gun, only it’s sentient and slightly tipsy-sounding. The humour on display mostly lands, but the combat and physics completely take center stage. Do you want to kill that guy? Throw a table at him, or a bookcase, or his friend’s corpse, or do nothing because he’ll likely die in the wreckage you caused while messing around with his now-defeated comrades. Robes & Wrinkles provided a raw thrill in its central gameplay mechanic that would be enough to sell me on the experience crafted here. A blessed cherry on top is that demoing the game at EGX exposed even more mechanics when scratching beyond the surface, the utility of the physics and fragility of the game world created unique opportunities for exploration and combat within the level design and I can’t wait for the next opportunity to be hands-on with it.

Boomball Extreme

Saving whatever this is for last feels apt because what better game is there to end on than the one that strains my abilities as a writer to recommend it? When I asked about why the UI used an Xbox 360 controller to explain the controls, assuming that the decision was nostalgia-based or aesthetic-motivated, the developers at BlackBox Studios told me it was the first image they found online. When I asked what the inspiration for Boomball Extreme was, they told me that they had the idea for it whilst drunk. In the game, we the player control small little creatures that can blow themselves up to knock the ball in any given direction to win a game of football. I mostly understood what I was doing during a split-screen match with my friend who had a much easier time winning than me, and despite my moderate confusion, we had a blast – pun intended. Boomball Extreme is something to put on your radar if you’re a sober person who can appreciate just about anything or a drunk person who doesn’t understand what they’re appreciating. Game nights are going to get a whole lot better when this thing releases.