The Queue: The post Summer Game Fest nap

It’s been a busy week of games, so this week should really be dedicated to sleeping things off. Or at least a nice piece of cake. As a treat. The week hasn’t been like that at all, but it should have been.

Many weeks are marred by a disappointing number of naps (and disappointing lack of cake).

But this is the Queue, our daily Q&A column where we try to answer your questions. Let’s dive in.

This was a really big Summer Game Fest season, with a week and a half of gaming showcases, including several first time showcases like the India Game Showcase and the Deutsche Indie Showcase (the latter I don’t think is brand new, but this is the first year I recall it being promoted in the SGF lineup). The regional showcases in particular are really fun to watch because they’re so varied, and highlight devs which might be missed in bigger shows (or which you might see again and again in different themed showcases). The Latin American Game Showcase is a standout every year, and often features some spectacular horror games (though there’s also a separate horror showcase, Midsummer Night Screams), and the Frosty Games Fest (Australia and New Zealand) is usually towards the top of the charts for weird, in a good way.

My favorite showcase was the brand new Story-Rich Showcase, which was put together by Fellow Traveler (publishers of Citizen Sleeper, among other excellent games). That was certainly my highest wpm (wishlists per minute) event this year, and featured Happy Broccoli’s upcoming game Apple Crumble, which is my favorite game on the roster this year.

You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned any of the big showcases: over the past week we also had PlayStation State of Play, Summer Game Fest itself, Xbox Games Showcase, and Nintendo Direct. There were interesting things here, but the mainstream gaming shows are frequently a lot of flash and noise and not a lot of substance. They’re heavily focused on shooters and sequels (the Xbox showcase in particular was lousy with sequels) and low on new ideas.

So I’m excited by the growing community of smaller indie showcases, which tend to be spectacular. Even the smallest of them brings interesting new ideals to the gaming world, games you would never see on a store shelf (metaphorically), and games where you may never shoot anyone. Revolutionary!

Watching these showcases are full of surprise and delight. A Lovecraftian game about penguins? A donut shop sim horror game? A watercolor-style Hansel and Gretel story in the original dark style of the fairy tale? A golf game in which you play a bee? A mystery puzzler with a Windows 3.1 aesthetic?

None of these will ever appear in big showcases. They’re too far off the mainstream. They’re oddball titles, and that’s what makes them so interesting. Indie showcases are practically the only place you’ll be surprised, and that makes them delightful.

And with more indie showcases this year, it has been a particularly delightful one.

This is generally the big downside to big gaming showcases. The first showcase I watched this summer was Thinky Direct, on May 28. But May 28 was two weeks and several hundred game trailers ago.

I recall enjoying the show, but the only reason I could tell you about any of the games it included is because some of them were highlighted in other showcases later, like The Granny Detective Society. But in general we’re in such a deluge of new games and trailers that it’s impossible to keep track, even if you’re wishlisting the games you liked as you go. Summer Game Fest is pure information overload. The human brain cannot keep track of this many games at once.

So while it’s an event that highlights a ton of games, particularly games by smaller indie developers that you may not know about, and who don’t get the spotlight in big game events, it’s also easy for games to get drowned out.

At the end of the week, you’ve seen a lot of games, but you may not remember any of them. I’m not sure how much that does for promotion…

My knee-jerk answer is Basil, from Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective or the Basil of Baker Street books, but he is such a Sherlock Holmes analog that it seems to side-step the question. (And Ratigan has the same problem, though voiced by Vincent Price he is impressive as a character in his own right.)

So I think instead I will go for Bernard, from The Rescuers. This timid little guy did not intend to become an adventurer, but here he is, anyway, and he’s doing his best. That’s all anybody can ask of anybody. (And Bob Newhart voicing him is pretty perfect.)

That’s all for today, folks, because this Queue already spontaneously combusted once and I’m not going to push my luck (or try to hunt for more questions). Take care of yourselves and have a good Thursday — we’ve almost made it to the weekend!