Games Fusion 2018: Beijing Game Festival

Beijing hosted video game festival Games Fusion by GameCores this past weekend, May 5-6, at the Etrong International Exhibition Convention Center. For two days, you could get your fill of new, unreleased, indie, retro, and board games while earning points for your team and winning free merch.

Red vs. Blue scoreboard

When you bought your ticket, you chose whether you wanted to be on the Blue team or the Red team, and you’d receive a ticket with the corresponding color. Once you arrived at Games Fusion, your ticket would be replaced with a colored wristband. At the festival, you could play against members from the other team in games like Mario Kart 8, Bomberman, Gang Beasts, Overcooked, and board games like Save Penguins, Pop-Up Pirate, and Let’s Go Fishin’. Whichever team won the challenge won points for their team, with “Hell Challenges” like Densha De Go, Bayonetta 2, Tetris DS, and Super Mario Maker awarding more points and the potential to win a Nintendo Switch, or (if you beat all four) a 4K TV, PS4 Pro, Nintendo Switch, Xbox 1, and a year of games.

Booklets handed out upon entering the venue allowed you to collect stamps from demoing games which you could trade for prizes. Of course, this meant 45 minutes or more of waiting for those designated games, while other booths lay abandoned. There was, for instance, a 30 minute wait just to play Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, which was released in October of last year. Many games, in fact, weren’t new for a foreign visitor– Assassin’s Creed: Origins, God of War, and Rainbow Six: Siege have all already been released in the west. However, none of them have been officially released in mainland China, so players were still excited to see these “unreleased” new games. One treat for a visiting foreigner was the chance to play Detroit: Become Human, which is still unreleased in both China and the west.

Indie game alley

If AAA games aren’t your style, there was a whole indie game alley laid out including AngerForce Strikers, Tavern Guardians, Yuppie Psycho, and Lost Castle.

There was also a mainstage where you could watch interviews with Stefanie Joosten (who did the motion capture for Quiet in MGSV), Jonathan Blow (creator of Braid and the Witness), Ubisoft China, Kan Gao (creator of To the Moon), and a variety of Chinese game studios.

Coconut Games panel on the main stage

At the end of each day, team points were tallied and the winning team received a pin declaring them “the Winner of the Day” with a scratch-off for a chance to win prizes. Luckily for everyone, Blue won day one and Red won day two.