Rezzed 2013: all of PC gaming life was hereFrom giant sequels to bizarre indie experiments, this weekend's Rezzed festival had it all. Here are my personal highlights – including the part where I cried
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Rezzed – all kinds of PC games under one gigantic industrial roof
The NEC is like something from one of JG Ballard's dystopian novels – a vast, terrifying industrial edifice surrounded by a grey desert of car parks. It is brutal and ugly and difficult to walk to from one of the hotels ostensibly serving it, due to the utter lack of pathways. The vast windowless halls resemble secret government buildings; the sort that might house officials in the event of a nuclear apocalypse. And yet here is Rezzed, a wonderful affirmation of PC gaming.
Over the course of last weekend, around 5000 gamers poured into Hall 9 of this intimidating pleasure complex, to play everything from major Triple A releases to bedroom coded indie experiments. Of the big guys, my favourite was Total War: Rome II. It's an utterly lavish real-time strategy sequel set in the ancient world and featuring an amazing 700 different units, including gigantic battle elephants that rampage over the sharply detailed landscape squishing enemies like insects. Brand new are the combined naval and land battles, which allow players to siege port towns and disembark units onto the beaches. Behind the scenes, the team has added an element of mass to units, so that attacking with camels downhill creates a thudding impact into enemy lines. It is completely enthralling and exciting – especially when zooming into your trireme as it rams the bejesus out of an opposing vessel.
Here, too, was the first opportunity to play Shadow Warrior, an incredibly bloody re-imagining of the classic first-person hack-'em-up, originally developed by 3D Realms. Using a variety of traditional Japanese weapons from swords to shuriken, delighted players were able to turn the screen into a crimson slaughter house of spraying blood and flying body bits. Apparently, developer Flying Wild Hog has toned down some of the frat boy sexism of the first title, but the gore definitely remains.
There was plenty more nostalgic wallowing for veteran gamers. I was delighted to see the forthcoming re-master of classic top-down co-op shooter The Chaos Engine, from Bitmap Brothers. Instead of going for a full HD remake, the team has polished the original steam punk blaster, adding better controls and a fuller save system. Another old school britsoft star, Team 17, was here with Worms Clan Wars, a PC-only instalment with improved physics and a hefty multiplayer league system. And then I momentarily wished I brought my sons to see Minecraft: The Walls, a PvsP survival version of my household's favourite game. Teams of players must construct a fort, then defend it against other squads in the same sector. It looked like enormous fun.
Elsewhere, Mitu Khandaker was showing off the latest build of her wonderful sci-fi parody, Redshirt; a wry study of Facebook addiction and Star Trek tropes. There was Richard Perrin, with his beautifully illustrated game Journal, which turns the everyday childhood travails of a young girl into a dramatic adventure. Drawing huge crowds were two projects co-developed by games journalists: the compelling open world survival game, Project Zomboid, with a script by Will Porter, and Sir You Are Being Hunted the amazingly atmospheric stealth game designed by Rock Paper Shotgun contributor Jim Rossignol that procedurally generates spooky renditions of the English countryside filled with gun-wielding robots.
However, by far the strangest title on the main show floor was Revenge of the Sunfish 2, a bizarre non-linear narrative adventure composed from a series of surrealist mini-games. Imagine if WarioWare had been conceived as a co-production between Terry Gilliam and Jeff Minter and you're sort of there. One minute you're a cat shooting severed human heads, the next you're a giant throwing tea cups at dogs, all accompanied by weird sound effects and wonky 8bit visuals. The work of lone Australian coder Jacob Waldemar Buczynski, who has spent five years on the project, it was one of the most talked about titles at Rezzed, confounding journalists with its solipsistic majesty.
For me though, the most intriguing draw was the leftfield tunnel, a long corridor dedicated to indie developers. Here I got my first play of Fullbright Company's engrossing adventure Gone Home, in which a daughter returns from traveling to find her family missing and the house empty: you have to explore each room, discovering notes and clues that hint at what has happened. Subtle and engaging it is an intriguing example of the sort of experiential game design that is flourishing in the indie sector.
I also tried the brilliantly tense, Silhouette, a sort of turn-based two-player murder sim from South African studio Manikin Games. One player takes on the role of the intended victim and must find a key to escape a creepy house, while the other participant is the maniacal slasher who has to hunt them down. Cleverly, movements are taken in timed turns, with the length of each segment reducing as the slasher gets closer to his or her prey. For the victim it's all about memorising the layout and avoiding the many physics objects that litter each room; for the killer, the skill is in trapping your opponent and ensuring a quick stabby onslaught so that the other player can't escape and grab one of the health pick-ups. It's frantic stuff, especially as the game can be played by two people on one keyboard, the proximity between hunter and victim adding to the ghoulish fun.
If you're looking for this year's Super Hexagon, you may want to keep an eye on Helix from the unconventional and uncompromising developer, Michael Brough. This turbo-paced tablet game gets you to swirl your avatar in circles around a series of incoming foes. Completing a full 360 degree pass eliminates the enemy, and tackling them in groups cranks up the combo multiplier. Like Super Hexagon it's fast-paced and gruellingly demanding, and the interface has been refined to absolute perfection. This is effectively uncut crack for high score hounds.
I tried two really interesting experimental titles as well. Icefishing is a sort of interactive audioscape designed by sound and music design student, Nate Gallardo. Players simply navigate a series of red and black environments shooting at white objects and hitting a button to instantly mutate the space into weird discordant shapes. Inspired by glitch bands like Oval, as well as the Japanoise scene, it's a mix between interactive art project and disorientating sound tool. Meanwhile, Morphopolis is a visually gorgeous hidden object puzzler set in a rich micro-world of insects and plant life. Designed by two architecture graduates Ceri Williams and Dan Walters, and heavily influenced by seventies graphic design, the game was a category winner at this year's Association of Illustrators Awards.
The biggest queues of the event were for the two indie titles being shown using the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset: Undercurrent and Ether One. I only got to try the latter, an interesting adventure title in which you play as a restorer, a gifted psychic capable of gaining access to another person's mind. Your job is to repair the memories of a mentally ill patient, although slowly it becomes clear that your character's own past is not what it seems. The Rift provides a neat technological metaphor for this process of immersion and the effect is startling at times – simple actions like negotiating a staircase take on a weird semi-reality as you look down and sense the distance to the bottom. Fascinating stuff. On the subject of VR I was also given a quick trailer of forthcoming sci-fi thriller Routine, set on an eerily abandoned lunar base. Channeling the original Dead Space and the movie Moon, it's a promising title and it's set to support the Oculus headset.
As well as the showfloor, Rezzed included a series of developer sessions, which were all really interesting. My favourite had Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijam of Dutch studio Vlambeer, chatting through the company's history and providing insight into the development of new title, Luftrausers, an improved version of the free flight shooter. The duo spoke with charm and humour about the studio's early days and its approach to development, which is all about very fast prototyping followed by months of iteration and refinement. You can watch all the sessions online via the Rezzed YouTube channel.
On the Sunday afternoon, I helped judge a Game Jam, where teams were given just ten hours to create games based around the theme, 'The '80s'. They were all so good; so clever, funny and intriguing, and I hope the winner, The 80 Spies, will be released as a full game, because it's a great riff on Chris Hecker's forthcoming Spy Party.
Personally, the toughest yet most important experience was playing the demo of That Dragon, Cancer
http://thatdragoncancer.com/, Ryan Green's heartwrenching game about his little son's battle with terminal illness. Designed as a sort of autobiographical adventure, the scene I played took place in a hospital intensive care unit where Ryan sits with Joel as the baby howls in pain and frustration. It is devastating. You can explore the room, but you cannot leave it, and the sampled sounds of the baby's cries are almost unbearable, while Ryan (who narrates the game) conveys his fear, hope and sheer lethargy.
I don't cry at films or books; I mean, I never have so far. But at the end of the demo, I put down the controller, and had to leave the building in tears. There are personal elements to this; the loss of my dad to cancer, of course, but also the terror any parent has of their child being ill – too ill to help. I stood outside in the drizzle for 20 minutes, composing myself, and then went back in. I'm speaking to Ryan and his team soon.
Rezzed said a lot to me about PC games, and about video games in general. The crowd was friendly, the developers enthusiastic and welcoming. This is an era in which massive million-pound projects stand beside games written in bedrooms for nothing, and both come out of it richer and more interesting – nothing seems out of place.
This is also an era in which games are truly expressive and filled with emotion. Sure, there is mindless shooting galore and there always will be, that is fine (Hotline Miami 2 was at Rezzed and looking AWESOME). But there is so much more; from the strategic depth of Total War to a man and his son in a hospital room, desperate and defiant. I will write more about most of these games in the coming weeks. For now, I just wanted to cram it all onto a page. These are incredible times for gaming. How lucky we are.
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