At least they make some good creature designs...

Their heads look way too small

Ahhh and the icon is a flame
Wow that's way too cute for that shithole of an app

One of my defining childhood games. Was really sad when I tried to re-play it again, thunking I had to without the dlc content.
But at least there are tools that can modify the savefiles to unlock all the additional content (which is a fcking lot!)
Also the local multiplayer was a banger!

14) Also some pins for my bag! Super happy to add an @amazefest.bsky.social button and a women in games pin next to my femdevs one.
Also the pokemon tcg one 🏳️‍⚧️

All in all I'm happy with my experience! I dipped my toes into networking and I think I got inspired to get back to dev stuff!

13) Finally the goodie haul:
Not a lot to get out of these conferences to be fair, which is ok. Less trash I have to get rid of someday.
Super happy with all the trading card demos and promos. (Again tcg booths doing the heavy lifting for me)
Small highlight the cabbage themed make up spong 🥬 lol

12) Checking out tcgs will definitely be one of my priorities the next time I might to some conference like gamescom

11) Actually I really enjoyed the tcg aisle where one could play demos of quite some games. I tried out digimon and grand archive for the first time, and while I probably won't get into them, it was super nice to learn about their resource systems and approach to card games.

10) I also have some games on my list that I'm gonna check out soon (guess what, only indie area titles, none of the big players from the show floor)

9) Anyway I met up with some awesome people of @purplesloth.studio. the chat was super nice and it was definitely a highlight for me.
In the end I went home with some business cards of people I wanted to meet for some time already (like @layn75.bsky.social ) and some awesome new people I met

8) I wish I could have spent more time there, but everytime I got overwhelmed after 20 min and it was so loud that I didn't even wanna talk to the awesome people there.
And like half of the hall is occupied by some empty bouncy things of the german church?!? Make it make sense (prob because money)

7) Indie area:
Why does it have to be soooo stuffed?!? 😭 Here is the potential for a great experience. Awesome games, and awesome devs to talk to!!!
But if every booth has on average like 30cm*30cm and the corridors are super small it just is a sensory nightmare for people with social phobia (eg me)

6) Biz area is kinda worthless for people fresh in the industry. Like you can have a nice chat but they won't give you a job. All the industry people want to speak to people who could give them money it feels like. Or to politicians I guess.

5) Gamescom:
The showfloor is a mess as expected, super full, incredible long wait times for super short demos of games which I either don't give a shit about or which I would rather try out in half a year at home.

4) A plus for the silent room, lots of fidget toys, some snacks and well silence for when one got overstimulated! Nice!

In the end the best part of devcom for me was to speak to other small devs and exchange experiences. Also approaching the speakers after their talks is good to get more out of it

3) Especially with the growing global hate against gender queer people and rewind of trans rights I hoped that the games Industry would have shown more solidarity... Speaking of: We had pronouns on our badges (yay), but all the toilets were exclusively binary gendered (nay) (or for disabled people)