WASD ’24 Impressions

Indie showcase WASD is back for it’s third year, once again at the Truman Brewery in London. We’ve enjoyed the shows previous years quite a lot (WASD 22 and WASD 23 thoughts can be found here) as they gave us the chance to check out a wide range of games and oddities we’re not likely to find elsewhere.

While there was still good stuff to WASD ’24 (we’ll list some of our favourites below), we came away from the event strangely underwhelmed this year. We were only able to get to the show on Saturday, but despite arriving a little later our group found ourselves ready to make a move sooner than we expected. We’re very privileged to be able to check out so many games throughout the year, but there were – it felt to us – far fewer must-see games in 2024. Don’t get us wrong, the event was packed with people having fun and checking out the games, but the lack of any real “stand-out” title was only compounded by almost all displays only having one or two screens available, meaning it was mostly waiting and watching others play, with the knock on effect being that by the time we got to play we’d kinda seen the game enough that we didn’t really need to play it much.

The Truman Brewery remains a great choice of venue, but the footprint taken over by WASD also seemed less than last year too, with a sizable corner of it reserved for Cult of the Lamb marketing and a retro Atari section. A not-insignificant number of games were already released too, only compounding the lack of new, exciting titles to play.

Once again, we’re very lucky to be so familiar with the slate of releases though, so perhaps it’s best to zoom out a little and take the experience from another viewpoint – Ladies Favourite Dan and his son, for whom this was his first event. We met up with them there and despite their travel journey being not-insignificant, he was a bundle of excitement, having a great time with many of the games both new and old.

And that’s really what WASD can be; a great wat to introduce new players to games regardless of ‘newness’ or hype. There will always be a part of us who want the new/shiny/hotness on display, but the aforementioned fact we had to wait for almost everything we played lends credence to that fact that – mostly – that didn’t matter to most attendees.

We’re certainly going to be heading back next year, and we hope it can curve back at least a little in terms of size and scope to include more screens, newer games, and a general sense of excitement that – for us at least – was sadly lacking this year.

However, that’s enough of the cynical old man take – what did we play? Check out the list below, and let us know below or on X if you went and what you enjoyed!

Outrage: Fight Fest – Hardball Games

One of the very few 4 player games on show, Outrage: Fight Fest filled in for the events typical multiplayer shenanigans. Played from a elevated isometric view, we engaged in free-for-all combat between us and one of the developers, using kicks and punches to whittle down each others health bar. One of the games unique aspects is in that as we take damage, our characters grow in size. This makes it easier to see who to focus on trying to take out, but the benefit for the person involved is that they can now pick up ever larger objects that can be thrown around. While at the start we can only manage a barrel or baseball bat, by the end we’re picking up cars and shipping containers.

It was a fun twist, giving it something else to hook us in over and above the Powerstone-style gameplay. The stand pointed out that there could actually be up to 16 players in a match across the various game modes, and we can only imagine the carnage of that many people lobbing vehicles and the like about. We didn’t get a release date (or even word of platforms outside of Steam for now), but this could be a fun hit should you manage to get a group of buddies together.

Cricket Through the Ages – Devolver Digital

Providing the biggest laughs of the day was Cricket Through the Ages. Put simply, think QWOP x Heave Ho – a wonky physics-based head to head game in which we try to win by using whatever mad props we’ve been given to knock our opponent out. Already out on Switch, PC, and Apple Arcade, this was still one of the more popular games that we saw, with people lining up to see the madness that ensued.

Just watch the trailer above to get an idea, but there’s far more to it than throwing a ball for someone to hit; from jousting, to cavemen fighting dinosaurs, crabs vs fishermen, and much more. There was rarely a round that didn’t have us chuckling away. It’d be great to see a port to Xbox for this one.

Luna Abyss – Bonsai Collective

I love a good bullet hell game, and I love a good FPS. So combining the two?? Count me in. I only got to have a quick go on this, most of which time was spent platforming in between encounters unfortunately. When I did get into a battle though, man, I can see me being rather transfixed by Luna Abyss. Placing the waves of bullets in a 3D space, and making the most of that opportunity by having them go up and around as well as side to side, was far more effective than I’d imagined watching the trailers.

I was also not sold on the idea of a lock-on for the aiming, but in practice it works brillaintly. Basically, we have full 360 movement and camera control, but holding down the right mouse button (I played the demo on PC) locks on the nearest foe. We can still strafe and move, but it lets us rack up those kills while dodging in coming fire with one less thing to contend with. It’ll be interesting to see how it fares in more intense battles that I’m sure will come later on, but in the small slice I played at WASD I saw some big potential indeed.

Arcade Paradise VR – Wired Productions

Corey reviewed the Xbox release of Arcade Paradise a few years back, and it’s something that caught my eye as someone who grew up in the height of the arcades. Plonking it in VR via the Meta Quest seemed like a good move, and after spending 10-ish minutes playing at WASD, I can confirm it was indeed. Being in the laundromat, clearing up the mess and playing the mini-game of throwing the trash away from a distance for some extra points was surprisingly great, but moving into the actual arcade out back was even better. I love light gun games, and so that was my favourite cabinet by a mile – we even needed to shoot outside of the virtual cabinets screen to reload! I dabbled in several of the other games but only briefly as I was trying to cram as much in as possible.

One stand out feature was the passthrough mode, which (when using a Quest 3 at least) places the arcade cabinets down in AR around us, making the most of the devices full colour display. They said it’ll work with Quest 2 (and Pro) too, but Quest 2 at least will be black and white real-life surroundings. I don’t get to use my Quest 2 as often as I’d like, but playing this inspired me to whack it on charge when I got home and hopefully on my head this week. Arcade Paradise is out now, and currently sat in my basket for when I do finally get around to playing on the Quest soon.

And that was pretty much that for our WASD ’24 experience. As we mentioned, this years show was underwhelming for us in terms of giving us a few truly exciting, new titles to see and play and chat with people about. But for less cynical gamers who just wanted a place to check out titles they might otherwise not have a chance to, then no doubt WASD had them covered this year. We’re looking forward to seeing what comes of (hopefully) 2025 and beyond offerings though, and there’s certainly a place in the calendar for shows like WASD.

Did you visit WASD? Let us know if so, what you played, and your thoughts on the show in general down below!

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Written by
I've been gaming since Spy vs Spy on the Master System, growing up as a Sega kid before realising the joy of multi-platform gaming. These days I can mostly be found on smaller indie titles, the occasional big RPG and doing poorly at Rainbow Six: Siege. Gamertag: Enaksan

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