On Friday the 10th of October we visited the 8th Game City in Vienna and hoped we’d make the best gaming experience of our live. Sadly the Game City didn’t meet our expectations. Too long queues, overcrowded halls and a limited variety of already known games made the excitement disappear quite quickly.
But let’s start by telling what the Game City offered. After we found the entrance after a whole round around the townhall we were able to enter the Game City but only after we queued to get one of the extremely desired wristbands for the 18+ areas. The path we took led us past Gran turismo, the fanta-van with minecraft, journey and two other games we can’t remember. Inside the townhall there was “just dance” and some other games on the X-box like Fifa. In the main room “Sims”, “Far cry”, “Assasins creed”, “Shadows of Mordor”, “Halo” and some Indie games were offered. Waiting for those games would have cost us a lot of time so we decided not to try those games. Instead we focused on the more artistic games that could be testes immedietly like “Journey” and “Monument Valley”.
“Jorney” is a beatifully designed game which lets you travel through a huge world full of fantastic “animals” made of fabric. During this game the player will be connected with a random player. You don’t get to know the name of this player until the very end of the game and you are not able to communicate with each other in any way. The only thing you can do is help him or her with their journey. We thought it was very interesting to go on an epic journey with a total stranger and then losing him after you built a relationship with him.
Another game we found very interesting was “Monument Valley”. This game for tablets and mobile devices scores with it’s stunning artwork and magnificent game mechanics. The player has to change the point of view of the whole map by tapping and draging. This way he creates optical paths for the main character who has to reach the end of the level. A very awesome game in our opinion which we chose to do our game research about (details in the next blog).
To sum it up: The Game City had some great games hidden in the smallest corners and a lot of big visitor attractions with too long queues. A lot of fun if you have a lot of time but less joy if you got little time and a limited amount of patience.
Huckleberry Games 