Room Escape Artist

In yesterday’s article, I discussed the offerings at Tribeca Festival’s 2024 Immersive exhibition. In short, I was unimpressed. But by contrast, Tribeca’s Games exhibit had a strong showing. Many of the featured games were interesting and puzzley and will be making my Steam wishlist.

The main complaint I had with the Games was their availability. One part of this is that the Games exhibit was physically separated from the Immersive section. In previous years, the two sections had lived together in the same building. This year, Mercer Labs was in downtown Manhattan in the financial district, and the Games were in Pier 57, over two miles uptown. Add on to that that the Games were only open for a single long weekend, and what had been a great pairing was turned into an inconvenience. The good news was that the games curated for this exhibit were worthy of being featured.

Arranger

Arranger was a story-based reverse sokoban game. Sokoban is the genre of block-pushing games with familiar titles like Baba is You. In Arranger, rather than nudging blocks individually through a grid, your character’s movements affect the entire row or column she is placed in. This mechanic was used to move key items towards specified areas. Arranger was an objective-based story game about a girl (the only one in her village with this grid-moving ability) leaving her town for the mysterious Wilderness. Arranger is set for full release on July 25th, and a demo is available on Steam.

Goodnight Universe

Next up was Goodnight Universe, Tribeca’s winning entry in the Game category. In this game, you play as a 6-month old baby who recently developed psychic powers, allowing you to hear others’ thoughts and manipulate the environment. The control system was an interesting hook – during game setup, you had the option to use a webcam to control the baby. Calibration was simple and fun, and playing using facial expressions was both novel and diegetic. Tribeca 2024 was Goodnight Universe’s world premiere, and it does not currently have a scheduled release date.

Blue Prince

Few things get the gaming community excited like inheritance law does, and that is the niche of the next game, Blue Prince. In Blue Prince, you take on the role of the grand-nephew of a recently deceased eccentric. The intro movie set the mysterious atmosphere by laying down your relative’s challenge – if you can find the 46th room in the 45 room mansion, the estate is yours. The game’s core gameplay was constructing the mansion room by room, hopefully without boxing yourself in like I did. You are only able to enter a limited number of rooms each day, and progress on the mansion resets to zero each day. There is a lot more to discover about this game, and I look forward to playing it. Blue Prince does not currently have a scheduled release date, but you can find more information and view trailers on the official website.

darkwebSTREAMER

Next was darkwebSTREAMER, which was both intriguing in concept and frustrating to play. In this game, your character’s objective is to become a successful occult streamer on the dark part of the 90s internet. For those of us that remember internet speeds in the 90s, streaming any video successfully would have been an occult practice! As you get more popular, it seems that what happens on your stream starts to bleed into real life. While playing the demo, many of the available options were unavailable in demo mode so I did not make a lot of progress, but the central idea and the art style of darkwebSTREAMER were enough to keep me looking out for the eventual full release.

Thank Goodness You’re Here!

Finally, I tried Thank Goodness You’re Here!. I found myself at a loss for words – in a positive way – describing this game. Your character is a little yellow gremlin man who is on a mission to talk to the Mayor of the English town of Barnsworth. But the mayor isn’t available right away, so I might as well go and visit the townsfolk. The townsfolk are colorful people having surreal problems that only I can help with. The demo (also available on Steam) was delightfully weird. I look forward to its full release on August 1st.

Final Thoughts

Tribeca Festival 2024 was a mixed bag, but my enthusiasm for the featured video games highlighted by the festival remains high. They served as a strong counterbalance to the disappointment of the ‘immersive’ section that they offered this year. 2023 was such a strong year that built on the successful format in 2022, and the backward movement in that area this year was a major misstep. Here’s hoping that 2025 offers us a return to form and a well-curated selection of virtual and alternate reality immersive storytelling to complement the consistently strong offerings of their Games exhibit.

Disclosure: Tribeca Festival provided a complimentary media ticket.