Tonight, as I write this, I realised something. It is the furthest away from the UK Games Expo that we will ever be. It is now one whole year until the next one – and that really sucks.

This weekend has been a phenomenal weekend, and it all wrapped up with today – a day we spent the majority of demoing games.

So, what happened today and how come this update is so late in the evening? Well…where to begin?

The Dark Room

We began the day in The Dark Room. Okay, so for those who aren’t regulars at the UK Games Expo, The Dark Room may need some explaining. The Dark Room is a live action video game in which comedian John Robertson acts as a sort of guide through a whimsical and completely nonsensical game known as The Dark Room. It is absolutely hilarious, and John is one of my all time favourite comedians.

The thing is, every year, John does a version of The Dark Room that starts at 11pm on the Saturday night at the Expo known as The Dark Room: Til’ Ya Die. We went and, in return for shouting along with a few phrases, received 3.5 hours worth of really funny entertainment. It was flamboyant potato filled, absurdist, weird, amazing fun. We actually spoke with John a couple of times this year and ended up with this photo as well to commemorate the occasion.

From Left to Right: Luke (Me), John, and Beth (My Partner)

Well…that is an attractive picture to forever immortalise on the internet.

What this meant though was that, since we didn’t get back to the hotel until 3.15 am, and were up at 8am, we walked around today in a bit of a zombie stupor.

So, what did we do? Well – Day 3 was set aside for two things. Firstly, we used it to shop for deals. Secondly, we used it to demo games we liked the look of.

Demos

The first game we demoed today was one of the games I wrote an article about earlier on in the week – Megacity Oceania.

Megacity Oceania

Megacity Oceania is a really interesting game. Designed by Jordan Draper and Michael Fox, Megacity Oceania is a dexterity based, euro-game style, competitive city builder in which you compete to be the most awarded architect. The game is absolutely beautiful to look at and, having spent around two hours around the stall today, we can tell you that it is as good as it sounds.

After this weekend I can’t help but think that Mike is one of my favourite game designers. I’ve played a couple of his games (and now own one) and they were both beautiful, elegant games, that offered a unique and brilliant experience.

Megacity Oceania comes out later on in the year and we have no doubt it is going to be huge. We watched and played games today, and everyone absolutely adored it.

The next game we demoed today was, and you may be able to predict this based on recent articles, Lander. Lander is a game about surviving after crashing on a planet. You need to train your crew, mine resources, and interact with your opponents in order to complete objectives and survive.

Lander

It makes me so happy to say that Lander is also as good as we predicted it would be on Thursday. It is absolutely fantastic and we can genuinely see it becoming the next Terraforiming Mars. Lander deserves to be big and successful (designed by Dan Alexander) and we look forward to writing more about it in due course.

Lander is currently undertaking a “Play Before You Pledge “campaign, where board game cafes all over the world will be receiving copies. I whole heartedly urge you to hunt down your closest copy and give it a test. If you love strategy games then you won’t be disappointed.

After that, well…we made a few final purchases and headed home.

Part of the Hall 1 leading to Hall 2

The Final List of Acquisitions

This evening we have just been eating Chinese food and playing a couple of games. There will be a full write up of the event in due course, as well as more articles about the games we saw there and the people we met. We’ll also write up a couple of the events we attended, so you can read more about them as well.

The important stuff though – what did we purchase.

Well…in no particular order…we left the UK Games Expo 2019 with:

• Flick ‘Em Up – Dead of Winter
• Meeple Circus
• Treasure Island
• Root
• New Corp Order
• Team 3
• Jungle Joust
• D6 Dungeon
• Mesozooic
• Mint Delivery
• Micro Brew
• Welcome To Dino World
• Blank
• Yamatai
• Frenetic
• Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr
• Fallout: The Board Game

That should keep us going for a while!

Anyway, we need to head to bed now. I personally can’t keep my eyes open and there is a lot of gaming that needs to happen over the coming week.

Thank you to everyone who has been following the past weekend. Live long and prosper.

Published by Luke

Board game nerd, comic book geek, Rubik's Cube solver, Splendor player, and Blogger. View all posts by Luke