Devolver Digital, in the past, has never been a publisher that I paid much attention to. Sure they publish some awesome titles but I never thought much of the actual team themselves. E3 has shined a whole new light on them for me personally. With their grotesque but witty theatrics, they have created an experience that I won’t forget anytime soon.
Any team can show big news when it comes to their games but can they also string it all together into an engaging experience? Devolver Digital attempts to do that this year by continuing their series of pre-recorded conference shows in-between gameplay reveals. Right from the get-go, you see the host of the show, Nina, being shot repeatedly. Blood splattering everywhere! For those who aren’t aware of Devolver’s storytelling in these conferences, like me, this can be quite confusing. Breaking the fourth wall, the additional characters, next, bicker whether they need the host or to even do the show at all in a manner of debating the value live e3 conferences bring. This banter and strange humour set the tone for the remaining 20 minutes or so, which had me constantly giggling at the absurdness of it all.
But you can’t have just an interesting story at e3! Devolver also crammed in a bunch of new information on upcoming games such as The Messenger DLC release date, a trailer for Fall Guys Ultimate Knockout and even an arcade cabinet game based on Enter the Gungeon. There were some great games but the one that surprisingly caught my attention the most was Devolver Bootleg, a bootleg collection of some of the more famous titles that they published themselves. Specifically, it was created by the developers who just pushed out Gato Roboto so the actual gameplay for these could be pretty great.
Zany tactics like creating an entire short film to showcase your conference and ripping off your own games in a collection are the amazing steps that Devolver Digital is taking to really make a name for themselves. I have always been a fan but never as much as I was watching this conference. It also helps that the games were pretty darn cool as well. I’m hoping that more teams will look at this and try to create their own interesting stories because it was my favorite part of e3 so far, even if these aren’t triple A title releases. Check out the video of the conference below.
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