PAX West 2018: ‘Bee Simulator’, ‘Party Golf’, and ‘Leisure Suit Larry’ Made For An Eclectic Mix Of Experiences!

Sunday felt like my busiest day at this year’s PAX West. I had completed a couple of interviews (look for them on the Geekscape Games audio feed in the coming days) and game demos on Saturday (I get in depth with Damnview: Built From Nothing here), attended the Bethesda Gameplay Days event (which Derek wrote about here), attended a panel about casual cosplay make up, and we recorded a nearly two-hour long podcast, it was a non-stop day! But Sunday was booked to be busy on a whole different level, I found myself staring at my calendar and realizing I would struggle to even find time to pee! Never the less, I was stoked because I was set to start my day off with a bang… or should I say a BUZZZZZ!

Bee Simulator

I’m not really sure why, but in the days leading up to PAX West, Bee Simulator had become my most anticipated game – maybe it has something to do with knowing that Bees are so very important and yet it is proving difficult for us to modify our behaviour in a way that stops them from dying. Because I was so excited,  waking up bright and early on Sunday morning after a late night of podcasting was no problem at all. I found Bee Simulator on the 6th floor in the Indie Games Poland booth which was hosting a number of independent game developers. There were already a couple people there demoing the game and getting pretty into it, so I was excited pretty stoked when it was my turn.

I had a chance to chat with Lukasz Rosinski, founder of Varsav Game Studios, and the man who came up with the idea for Bee Simulator. It turns out that a couple of years ago Lukasz was reading a book about bees to his young daughter, and realized the lives of bees would make an awesome video game. The goal of creating Bee Simulator was to make a chill-out game that children and parents could play easily together, while facilitating understanding about bees lives and how they are endangered by humans. They came up with a way to turn the lives of bees into an arcade style game that has many elements of simulation and education. There are so many educational elements, but it simply doesn’t feel like an educational game. I quickly noticed that all of the little points in a regular game, usually during a loading screen, where you’re learning tips about gameplay, in this game you’re instead learning tips about bee life that are also helpful for playing the game.

Although the game is designed to play with children, it’s also designed to be challenging for adults. They have managed this by creating two different sets of mechanics for game play, one that’s a little more straight forward and puts more emphasis on speed and fun than on accuracy, and another that’s more challenging by requiring more accuracy, and requires more specific gathering strategies etc… Basically, the mechanics are simpler for kids (or Mikaela’s), but will be more complex for adults. For example, on the more challenging setting you need to collect the pollen in the right colour order in order to make the music play correctly and obtain the achievement, or go through smaller rings and come closer to natural enemies of bees such as frogs, wasps, and humans.

There are three different gameplay modes: a single player campaign, a cooperative mode that has you working together or having little competitions such as racing/dancing/collecting pollen, and a free flight mode that allows you to go back after finishing the game in order to find and unlock all of the achievements. Turns out bees use dancing as a way of leading other bees to the hottest pollen pick up spots! Who even knew there was so much to know about bees!? Well if you are like me and had no idea, and also like learning without realizing you’re learning, this game is for you, the amount of bee facts I picked up from this half hour demo are more than all of the other bee facts I have ever known. Bees are fascinating!

The world of bees in this game is designed after a huge expanse of Central Park for New York, which is about 1/3 of Central Park, but from the bee perspective you are playing in this is enormous. You also get a detailed inside hive perspective from the 5 roomed hive within a tree (that’s at risk of being cut down by senseless humans!). You start out in the hive, and one of the first things I noticed was the richness of the colours and textures and the beauty of the light pouring into the tree. The beauty of the game setting continues as you leave the hive and enter the big bad world of Central Park with dazzling colours and HUGE plants/animals/people!

The mechanics of this game seem pretty straightforward. I would likely be more comfortable starting with the ‘kids’ mode as it would allow me to fully play without being totally frustrated by trying to make things work, whereas more pro gamers would likely enjoy the challenges of the ‘adult’ mode. By visiting the queen be you receive quests, and can also receive side quests from other characters. The tasks you need to do are interesting and complex. For example: Bees are required to go out and pick up pollen, then need to bring it back to the hive, which makes you heavier and slower. However, like in real life if a bee needs more energy to pick up more speed to get back to the hive they may eat some of the pollen they have collected. It also tracks the amount of pollen you pick up throughout the game and you are required to pick up the amount an average bee will pick up during their life in order to finish the game.

This game isn’t designed to be stressful, dangerous, or fast paced. It is designed to create a chill environment that allows the player to relax and wind down while engaging in something interesting, either with their family or friends, or by themselves. The music throughout this game is perfect for creating that zen atmosphere. The composer for the sound track was none other than Mikołaj Stroiński, who was created the soundtrack for games such as The Witcher and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. You’ll also notice the graphics in this game are absolutely beautiful, AND it turns out the graphics team is comprised totally of women! I thought this was pretty neat as the video game industry has traditionally been a pretty male dominated field.

I learned soooo much about bees just during this demo, but you learn all this and more while you are playing, because these become things you need to know to be successful in the game. It is such a neat concept, as literally every game you pick up you have to learn something in order to play it well, why not make it something that actually applies to an important part of the world around you… BEES! There are so many more interesting details about this game, so make sure to take a listen to the interview I had with Lukasz on the Geekscape Games audio feed in the coming days! Bee Simulator flies onto Xbox One, Steam, PS4, and Switch later this year!

Party Golf / Wandering

Once I finished bee simulating I had a little bit of time to kill before my next appointment, so I decided to check out the 6th floor a little bit. I made it all of about 3 booths in before I became totally distracted by bright light and neon colours. I stopped at the Giant Margarita booth, promoting their games Party Golf and the newer Party Crashers to check out what was going on. By this I mean I slowly crept forward, repeatedly saying I didn’t have time to get into it, until finally I was playing Party Golf until they had to cut me off cause it was someone else turn. After which I immediately went and found Derek and brought him over to show him the next party game we have to buy.

I don’t have a huge amount of proper info to give about this game as I didn’t have time to stick around and talk to the developer about it or anything, but what I can tell you is that it is suuuuper fun and engaging… and it really had nothing to do with golf. Basically you control a golfball and your goal is to get it into the hole, the person who does it first is the winner. The game is available on Steam, PS4, and Switch, and is headed to Xbox One soon. It’s predominantly played couch-coop style in groups of up to 8 people.

You have the option to play randomly generated levels, not knowing what each landscape is going to look like, which was fine by me cause it was just super fun and simple and quick to play. You also have the option to customize each round that you play with over 300 customizable features. For example, the game I was playing at first was normal, then there were mines in the sky that exploded you in different directions on impact, then the bounce of our balls was drastically decreased which added a whole new level of challenge. We also played a mode where the goal was to bounce each other off of the screen, so naturally I was immediately out on most of those levels, but that was ok cause once you were out you could still mess with other people! Great fun!

When Derek and I came back we got the chance to demo Party Crashers in a topdown handheld switch style. This was basically a racing game, but similar to Party Golf, there are a bajillion different ways in which it can be modified to change the challenges. I have never so immediately been so good at a game, I was lapping everyone like it was nobodies business! Then the demo guy started trying to give Derek some instruction on how to get himself out of the corner… this was when I realized that I was not infact the brown car whizzing around the track, but instead the white car that was going in the wrong direction from the start line and stuck in a corner so badly that I was just handed a new controller to play as a different car… facepalm.

However, user errors aside, both games were super fun. With simple and aesthetically pleasing graphics, using lots of neon bright colours, and fun music to go along with it. I can see how they would be a hit at any party, and I can’t wait to play them at home with friends and lots of yelling!

After the Giant Margarita booth Derek and I had to rush over to an appointment at the Question booth to demo their new co-op horror game The Blackout Club. I won’t go into too much detail here as Derek wrote about the game right here; however, the game looks super neat. The premise is that adults are sleep walking at night in this small town that is cut off from the outside world and the teens in the town are trying to figure out what in the hell is going on, while trying in the daytime to get their parents, teachers, neighbours, really any adult to just believe that this is even happening. All the while they are at risk of being caught by The Shape, which could happen at anytime, as you won’t know it’s there until you close your eyes! Immediately, like literally less than a minute into the freaking tutorial for this game I was super freaked out! I can’t wait to play this one either. Be sure to check out the Geekscape Games feed to find our audio interview with Question co-founder Stephen Alexander in the coming days.

I ended up abandoning Derek at The Blackout Club so he could wait to get in on a group playing session, while I headed over to my appointment with Corey Clark of Balanced Media Technology. Balanced Media Technology is an amazing company that is harnessing the computing power of the gaming community to do data analysis for the medical field. Actually it is way more complicated than that and I am still working to wrap my head around it, but here is a little explanation from their website:

BALANCED Media | Technology is purpose driven to globally improve health, empower industry innovation, and assist problem solving through cross-disciplinary collaboration using gaming and computer science. BALANCED connects communities of developers, researchers, foundations, and industry in cross disciplinary collaboration allowing them to create tools and techniques never before available.

It was one of the most interesting and impactful things I came across this weekend at PAX West, and totally opened my eyes to the intersection between gaming/computing and the medical field. I will be uploading the audio interview I had with Corey, as well as writing an article about what I learned, so keep an eye out on the site in the near future for these!

Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry

After having this amazing heartfelt, in-depth dicussion about power of technology in the medical field, I made my way over to the Theodore Hotel to meet with the team for Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry… I think the title speaks for itself pretty well, and I’m sure you can imagine it was a bit of a mindfuck to go from one subject to the next. That being said, if I hadn’t just been crying about the story of a kid curing his brain cancer with the empowering help of video games, I probably would have gotten into the Leisure Suit Larry mindset a little easier! But I managed to get caught up in the hilarity of this ridiculous game by the end of the demo.

The first of the Leisure Suit Larry games came onto the scene in 1987, with many more to follow, and the latest iteration, Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry, is coming from developer CrazyBunch out of Germany. This game has the 1987 Larry Laffer waking up in 2018, with no idea how or why he is there, and really we never get into that, that’s not the point. Instead we get to see the cringe worthy Larry try to work his magic (or lack there of) on the ladies of the 21st century. Its is truly laughable. I don’t know what dating was like in the 80’s, but it certainly did not involve Tinder or Instagram and all of the foibles that come with every 21st century person having a phone glued to their face! Larry quickly becomes aquatinted with ‘Timber’, ‘Instacrap’, and ‘FarceBook’ as he tries to get to the woman of his dreams!

Honestly, I can see how this game would not appeal to many people as it is crass and cheesy and full of so many sexual innuendos… But I can also see how the ridiculous humour would totally appeal to those who aren’t a stick in the mud, or who have a fond little soft spot in their heart from the previous Larry games. I fall right into the middle there, I am totally into the raunchiness of this game, and until this point was 100% unaware that any version of Larry had ever existed (Sorry Jonathan)! I love that this game doesn’t take itself seriously, and goes out of its way to make fun of its hero at every possible turn. It does a great job of turning so many aspects of society that we so blindly accept into a freaking joke, allowing you to reflect on our own reality as totally ridiculous!

The art is fun and bubbly, the characters are hand drawn, and if you pay attention there are so many references hidden throughout the game. One of my favourite examples of this is when Larry goes to take a prototype phone he has found back to the companies headquarters and walks up to a large building that is clearly a giant phalus that sports a fountain right on top, providing us with a visual that any 14 year old boy would appreciate (along with most of my family I’m sure). This building has a rainbow fruit symbol on it, that is clearly supposed to mimic an Apple logo, but also very clearly supposed to mimic a vulva, especially when the elevator doors in the same shape open to let Larry enter. At one point Larry goes into a sex shop that has so many (barely) hidden images even the people who have worked on this game are still discovering little things here and there that they had neglected to notice until now.

The gameplay seems pretty straight forward – it’s a point and click game and seems as though it will indicate all the possible things you can explore as you work your way through this non linear story line. The main goal of the game is for Larry to increase his Timber score through dating various women, until it reaches 90% so he can date the super fine character Faith. There are puzzles throughout and lots to explore. This game has been designed by a group of millenials who aren’t afraid to poke fun at themselves, and honestly I can’t wait to give it a real shot! There are so many hidden gems buried within this game, I really can’t wait to see whats in store! Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry releases November 7th.