This past weekend my 16 year old son and I went to the Day of the Devs in San Francisco. This is where indie developers can showcase their new games and ideas. The main reason we went there was to see a preview of Yooka-Laylee (due out Q1, 2017 on all consoles), the sequel to Banjo Kazooie and that was funded by Kickstarter. We also saw some other cool games, and some real head-scratchers.
I've been gaming since Pong, and one of my favorite games of all time is Banjo Kazooie for the N64. I introduced this game to my son and he really enjoyed it and introduced it to his friends. He's been following Yooka-Laylee since the beginning, and when he realized it was going to be in San Francisco, he jokingly said "Can we go?". We live in So Cal, so it's either a 1.5 hour flight or an 8 hour drive. We ended up going because my son is going to be off to college within 2 years and I didn't want to look back and lament not taking him while listening to "The Cat's in the Cradle."
Day of the Devs was open from 1pm to 10pm on Saturday, and we waited 3 hours in line for my son to play Yooka-Laylee (each player was allowed 15 minutes). The 1st level we saw was absolutely massive, and the colors were so vibrant it really made the game pop. My son said that the controls were really tight and he had a blast playing it. I spoke to one of the developers, a French guy living in L.A., and he said the game took a team of 15 a year and a half to complete. At 8pm we stood in line again (only less than an hour this time) and my son said that it was a much better experience as he had a better feel for the controls and the world.
My son and I also played a game called Luna for the PC, a VR game that was a "build your own forested world in space". Pretty bizarre but really cool. First time I played VR, and it was bizarre looking straight down and feeling you were in space. There was a glitch halfway through, and the developer had to turn the game off and back on which fixed the problem. But the game really whet my appetite for VR. They also showed another VR game, Psychonauts, but we didn't get a chance to play it.
There was another game, Ninjabobs (or something like that) a two player game where you control a character who looks like a caveman Homer Simpson, using swords, bows, axes, etc. to make it to your end of the board first in this bizarro world. It looked fun.
Another game, I think called "This is Chicago" was a total head scratcher. From what I can tell, you walked around your town and had dinner with your family. I kid you not.
I'll probably add more to this thread when my son gets home from school.
Overall, my son had a blast and I'm glad we went.
Family time at Day of the Devs
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