Meagan140+ games. Four Floors. Live Panels. 20 Total Hours. Midtown Manhattan. Food and Drinks.
This is everything that Play NYC 2018 was composed of. It is also the first and the biggest gaming convention in the Big Apple. If anything, it reminded me of a huge Barcade, except way bigger and no age limit.
I had the opportunity to attend this year for the first time ever, and I can say it was pretty fun! I am slowly but surely (eh, kinda) getting back to my gaming ways, and I figured attending this event would help me out.
The venue, the Hammerstein Ballroom, is actually very big. However, since Play NYC was bigger, I think they had troubles fitting every single game in this ballroom. I mean, look at it:
While they advertised that there were 4 floors of gaming, 95% of the games were placed on the first and second floor. The third floor was mainly a seating area to watch the live panel below, and the fourth floor contained a room with two or three games. There were also games in the food court area down in the basement. No matter where you walked, you were always at least 10 feet away from a game.
So below, I had reviewed the top 5 games that I found pretty interesting at Play NYC this year. However please note that I did not get to try out/look at every single game at the convention. These are the ones that I got to play/witness, and I liked a lot.
Top 5 Interesting Games I Saw at Play NYC (In My Opinion)
1. Imposter Drawster
Out of all the games I played at Play NYC, this was possibly my favorite one. Imposter Drawster pretty much goes like this – a group of 3 or more people take turns drawing whatever the topic is (found on the top of the screen). You only get a limited amount of drawing strokes until you have to pass the tablet to the next person. However, there is one person in the group (an Imposter) who has no clue what the topic is nor what everyone else is trying to draw. So they kinda go along with the flow and continue the drawing, in hopes that they fool everybody else. Nobody knows who this person is (or at least nobody should know!) and towards the end of the game, everyone has to guess who the Imposter was. Whoever guesses correctly wins a point.
Our group had gotten the term “mountain lion”, and as you can see, nobody knew what a mountain lion looked like lol. Matter of fact, I was the one who started the drawings of the mountains in the back to try to help out our misleading picture. As for the imposter, my friend pretty much gave herself away – as soon as she received the tablet, she said quote on quote, “um what am I supposed to draw? I do not see anything.” And at that moment, we all knew.
2. Ultimate Clap Back
Do you secretly hate your friends? Did they do something that pissed you off so much you want to passive aggressively sneak diss them? Then this is the game for you!
No but seriously, the Ultimate Clap Back game is not for the faint of heart nor the sensitive. If you don’t already know, a “clap back” is an insulting response to an insult someone made to you. So you can guess what this game is about.
You play with a group of 3 or more people. Each person gets about 5 cards that have “clap backs” (or insults) on them. Then, the first person picks up a card from the pink deck aka the “deck of shade”. He or she gets to choose whomever he or she wants to insult (which adds to the f*cked up nature of the game) and puts the card down in their face while reciting what’s on the card. That person then has to counter-insult them by pulling out a card from their 5 deck of cards, making a “clap back”. If the other person feels like it was a good clapback, then the clap-backer gets a point. Yup, that’s exactly how this game works.
Some of the cards aren’t that bad. However, others just have no mercy. Matter of fact, here’s what happened when my friend’s boyfriend, the game coordinator, and I decided to play (my friend decided not to play). Let me just say this – I’ve known my friend for over 10 years, and her boyfriend for about 6 years. It was my turn to take a card from the deck and make a “diss” towards somebody. I picked up the card, and lo and behold, the card said something along the lines of “Why are you still dating that slug?” Well, I couldn’t point it towards the game coordinator because I don’t know anything about her. So yeah, I had to point it towards my friend’s boyfriend. We all laughed about it, but truth be told I felt so damn awkward.
3. Trivia Streak
There were plentyyy of different types of trivia games, however this one – called Trivia Streak – stood out to me.
So the way Trivia Streak works – you have to answer 12 questions correctly in a row. You’re given a time limit of about 10 seconds per question, and one life line (so you can only get one question incorrect). If you guess all 12 questions correctly, you win a prize! However, there’s a twist – let’s say you do not want this prize. Well, you have the option to give the prize to a charity of your choice.
I found the charity part pretty neat, especially since I’m all about giving back. But man, those questions were tough. I didn’t even get to get past the 4th question both times. I believe they had just launched the app the day of Play NYC, so it was cool to be one of the first people to try it out.
4. Chef Umami
This game pretty much teaches you how to cook without you even realizing it. You can tell because of the commentary after playing the game – “man, if only I had left the hamburger on the grill for like 10 more seconds”, “oh no, I don’t think I seasoned that well enough”, etc. The game also sort of tests your patience and customer service skills – if you can get through this game without wanting to yell at a customer who complains about the smallest things, then good for you.
In this game, you are a chef (of course) and you have to try to create each meal based on how each customer wants it. Or you can also create your own unique meal. Just like in real life, you have to try to create each meal fast and just the way your customer likes it. If the customer is very satisfied, you get 5 stars. If they’re not satisfied, then you get 4 or less stars. Of course your goal is to try to accumulate as many 5 star ratings as you can.
The game is also very similar to Cooking Mama and Diner Dash, if you remember those games from back in the day.
5. Nile City
Now this is a game that I didn’t get a chance to play. Mainly because every single time we stopped by its station, somebody else was playing it. After trying for the 5th time to play the game and not succeeding, I decided to look on while somebody else played.
Nile City is pretty much a shooting horror game where you have to kill zombies to make it from point A to point B. Play NYC was also the first time it was shown to the public, ever. However, what made this game very interesting to me is that the main character was actually a person of color. Now, I never really thought about this until my friend pointed it out to me – you never really see a person of color as the lead player in a horror video game. So I thought that was pretty neat.
I spoke to the game developer for a bit as well, and he told me that he had created everything within the game – everything from the graphics to the actual game play. That takes a lot of work and wit, and I found that pretty impressive.
