Today at Summer Games Fest, we got to go hands on with a litany of games at the Day of the Devs booth. We saw four different games with many of them being absolutely off the wall! Those four games were UFO 50, While Waiting, After Love EP, and Building Relationships. The four games were all very different from genre perspectives with none being anywhere remotely similar. Thus, let’s take a look at the games!

Building Relationships

The first game we saw at Day of the Devs was Building Relationships which is the name of the game in the most literal sense. The game literally has you playing as a house that arrives at an island resort full of single houses for you to form relationships and mingle with.  The game is hilarious. From moving around (mostly rolling around) as a house to the dialogue the houses have between I was genuinely laughing the entire time I was playing. The short demo had us interacting and flirting with a few houses (though one house and I discussed what a man and a bro were) as well as fishing for cars and rolling around everywhere. The game isn’t strictly a dating sim though as the developer described it as an adventure game with some flirtatious aspects. Building Relationships is sure to be a hilarious little game once it releases.

UFO 50

Next up, we saw the minigame collection game UFO 50. The premise of the game is all 50 of the games included are games made by a fictional game developer called UFOsoft over the course of its history. Thus, it’s basically an Arcade Archives collection for a fictional company. All the games hearken back to the early eras of video games. There aren’t any modern-esque type games in the collection. Some of the games are incredibly silly such as one where you basically have to figure out the controls yourself, others are similar to Castlevania or A Boy and His Blob, or a Pong like with ninjas and samurai. There’s a wide array of types of game that can either be played alone, two player versus, or two player co-op so you can enjoy UFO 50 alone or with a friend.

After Love EP

The third game we saw was After Love EP.  The game is a simply designed narrative game about overcoming the loss of a loved one. This ended up being symbolic for the developers as the creator of the game, Mohammad Fahmi, sadly passed away back in 2022 after writing the game. The game follows the character Rama, a young musician from Indonesia, in the aftermath of his girlfriend’s death and how he tries to recover from it. Rama has many ways to try to deal with his grief such as spending times with friends, going to therapy, or putting his focus into his music. We didn’t delve deep into the narrative itself in our short time with it, but the person we discussed the game with call the game, especially the beginning, reminiscent to Disney’s Up.

While Waiting

Finally, the last game we played was the silly try not to be bored and keep yourself busy game While Waiting. This game features over 100 scenarios where you try to find things to do well “while waiting” for monotonous things to finish such as waiting for traffic to move, waiting for the bus, or waiting for the rain to stop.  Each scenario has a five item check list for things that can be done during that time such as doing absolutely nothing. However, they can be very silly like getting out of the car and letting your parents drive off, putting a poster on a dog’s face, or a bullet hell of trying to avoid falling raindrops with your hand. These things aren’t objectively stated and are usually listed in a cheeky way for you to discover, While Waiting is a humorous little games that anyone will enjoy.