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GC ‘06 - (Almost) Live from Leipzig

The fifth annual Games Convention is now underway in Leipzig, and with Germany leading the way in the genre these days, GC is the place to be for all the latest adventure news. But with the Adventure Gamers staff too tired, cranky, and still broke from E3, we couldn't attend the event ourselves. Fortunately, the German crew at Adventure-Treff is on the scene, and Jan Schneider has offered to share their experiences. The following daily reports will first appear in German on the Adventure-Treff site, and are being translated and reprinted here with permission.

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August 23rd - Day One

 

It's 7:00 am when I wake up. Martin Lassahn, my room neighbour and temporary Adventure-Treff editorial assistant, informs me with tentative knocks on my door that I am half an hour late. Damn clock. I met my colleague Sebastian "zeebee" Walczyk for breakfast, and then it was off to the show. The ride to the convention, which was not very long thanks to the new Autobahn 38, was as uneventful as the accreditation process after we arrived.

The first event at the Games Convention was the opening press conference at 8.30 am. As expected, there were no adventures featured, but a man in a silly costume told us that the long-haired guy next to me is a pioneer of the Machinima scene, and that we should ask him anything we wanted to know on that topic. What Angela Schierholz, project director for GC, had to say was much more interesting, but still not interesting enough for this article.

After that we took a tour through the Business Center, which is an area where you can meet publishers and developers without having to be disturbed by screaming kids playing game demos. There we found where our appointments would be located later on. Our first real press conference was at the Nintendo booth, where we learned that the DS is generating incredible sales and that the Wii is pretty difficult to control. At least, Jörg Pilawa (a German show master) and the other players had a hard time getting the hang of it.

 

 

 

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Overclocked

But let's get to adventures. Our first contact within the genre was at the Anaconda Theatre, where the booth babes and dtp representatives showed us the world of Anaconda games. Particularly interesting for us was Overclocked by House of Tales, which we could see in action for the first time. We especially liked the cinematic presentation with split screens, zooms, and lots of camera angles, although the backgrounds are prerendered. The logic of one puzzle was not clear to us, but we'll be able to ask the developer Martin Ganteföhr tomorrow. Also in the Anaconda Theatre was a new playable chapter of Runaway 2, though this game has been previewed quite extensively, so we won't cover that here.

Early in the afternoon, we hoped to have a look Tanita: Plasticine Dream and Dead Mountaineer's Hotel at Akella. Unfortunately, they had problems with their computers so they gave us a CD of their demonstration materials. There is no trace of Hotel on the CD, but it did contain a demo of Tanita, the claymation adventure. First impression: very colourful, very happy, and artistically so bizarre that we're wondering what the developers were smoking.

 

 

 

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Simon the Sorcerer 4

At last we had our long-awaited appointment with RTL Enterprises, who showed us the first playable scenes from Simon the Sorcerer 4. Since his last adventure, Simon has spent some years as a normal teenager, but he returns to the magic world when an evil lookalike of him appears. The new game will be more like the first two games in many ways: Simon will be mean sometimes, but not as evil as in the third game. Also, the prerendered backgrounds look much better than the ugly last game. The German version is planned to be released in February 2007, and we will have more details in our upcoming preview.

At 4pm, we had originally planned an appointment with CDV to see Jack Keane. But after the publisher changed to 10tacle only days before the GC, we weren't sure if we would see the game. But when we arrived at CDV, two of the developers from Deck 13 were there to show us the game. Jack Keane looks a bit like Ankh in the jungle, but with more details and new graphic features that make the game a bit prettier. The publisher change to 10tacle shouldn't influence the game content or release date, which is still scheduled for the first quarter of 2007.

A spontaneously-planned appointment with dtp put us under a bit of time pressure. But it allowed us to ask some questions about Undercover: Operation Wintersun to developer Harald Riegler, from Sproing. The game is almost done, and should reach stores in just a few weeks. Runaway 2 and Tony Tough 2 already contain German subtitles, so it is very probable that those games will also be done soon. We are not so sure about Belief & Betrayal, for which we only got a few new screenshots. Reprobates, by Future Games, has been postponed to Q1 2007, and the GC trailer showed little more than the teaser which is already available online.

 

 

 

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Ankh: Heart of Osiris

The last appointment of our first day at GC was at bhv, where two other Deck 13 developers showed us Ankh: Heart of Osiris. This standalone expansion is meant to be at least as long as Ankh, but about 50% of the scenery is reused (though improved) material from the original game. The surprise of the day occurred when we found a Bone poster on the walls in the bhv booth. The reason: bhv will release the first two episodes of Bone with German voiceovers as Bone Gold in Germany. The boxed set will be pretty expensive compared to the online versions, retailing for about 40 euro.

The last event of the day was a concert performed by the Filmharmonic Orchestra of Prague, who played music from old and new games under maestro Andy Brick. In addition to titles from Final Fantasy VI & VII (with choir and organ), Castlevania (with the composer on the piano) and Sonic the Hedgehog, for adventure fans there was an interesting piece with the Dreamfall medley by Leon Willett. I'd tell you about the speeches following the concert, but they didn't have to do with adventures, and more importantly, I now have less than two hours left to sleep before it's time to get up and start the process all over again.

Click on next page for Day Two coverage out of GC.

August 24th - Day Two

 

At 7:00 am, the alarm goes off. Continuing from Wednesday, it's going to be another exhausting but informative day at the convention. Another Adventure-Treff colleague, Sebastian "basti007" Grünwald, surprised us at breakfast, having traveled that morning from deepest Bavaria in order to tell his favorite female adventure game designer where he had just come from.

Having arrived at the convention, the first thing to do was to upload the fruits of last night's writing onto the Internet. While I took care of this glamorous task, my colleagues took incredible, incomprehensible photos of themselves posing with Speed-Link booth babes, telling me: "You schmuck! You're resizing photos, while we… mwahaha! See for yourself!" The ladies! The car hoods! The handcuffs! I should write a book: The Opportunities One Passes Up.

Our walk towards the convention hall was interrupted first when we ran into our Adventure Corner colleague Matthias Mangelsdorf, and then superstar developer Will Wright (who, in contrast with Matthias, did not say hello), and finally by our watches, alerting us to the first appointment on our schedule…

Which would be the dtp press conference featuring Jane Jensen, in which the first details about Gray Matter were to be revealed. Crowds were already gathered around her in the conference room, as if she was Robbie Williams. Or as if she was sitting on a car hood by the Speed-Link booth. In any case, there was flashing of cameras around Jensen as I have never before seen at the GC. Putting our journalistic integrity at risk, we had our Gabriel Knight boxes signed, and then listened to the presentation and asked a couple of questions. We will write a dedicated article about what we learned in a few days.

 

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Jane Jensen presents Gray Matter.

 

Right afterwards came our appointment with Crimson Cow, where Georg Hach and Kai Fiebig chatted with us about The Abbey and A Vampyre Story. At first the conversation was about the Name of the Rose-inspired comic adventure from Alcachofa Soft. The concept of this game, however, has been radically revised. All the pictures and information published so far might therefore only very approximately reflect the final style of the game.

Of Bill Tiller's new comic adventure from the land of the vampires, we got to see a ten minute-long storyboard film. This consisted of only roughly animated storyboard sketches, but was already good for a lot of laughs from the audience. If the humor maintains the level of quality of this concept trailer, we have little to worry about when it comes to this title. A short presentation was also given about Atlantis V, but it told us very little new about the game.

From Crimson Cow we made our way purposefully to Koch Media, where we again had the opportunity to chat for a quarter of an hour with Secret Files: Tunguska developer Marco Zeugner. He received the latest magazine ratings from PC Powerplay (83%, up there with Broken Sword 4) with a mix of delighted satisfaction and a hint of suppressed disappointment at the information.

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The convention grounds in Leipzig.

 

Next stop was at House of Tales, where Martin Ganteföhr took the time for an hour-long presentation of Overclocked, and described the cinematic presentation of the title. You will of course be able to read more about that in a new preview report shortly.

Later still there were meetings with Private Moon Studios, who had interesting details to share about Yoomurjak's Ring, and Future Games, whom we talked to about Reprobates and their other title (developed by a separate team), Tale of a Hero. Especially interesting was the announcement that after these two titles, Future Games would like to move away from pre-rendered backgrounds and only develop in full 3D.

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The Adventure-Treff team at The Café am Markt in Rötha (south of Leipzig).

 

After this, the schedule called for me to make my farewell stroll through the Business Center, since Thursday was to be my last day at the GC this year. It had suddenly become necessary for me to leave Leipzig early the next morning, so our GC 2006 visit has been cut unexpectedly short.


Adventure Gamers thanks Jan Schneider and the rest of the Adventure-Treff team for their insightful reports out of GC. Despite the abbreviated coverage directly from the convention, stay tuned for more in-depth impressions of the games at the show.


Reports by Jan Schneider

Photos by Martin Lassahn

Translation, Day Two, by Gunnar Harboe

 

 

 

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