One of 𝕴my favourite parts of any convention is browsing the aisles of indie games and seeing what catches my eye, giving them a go, and leaving with a hefty wishlist. The downside is that you often have to wait for others to fin🐭ish the demo before you can get hands-on yourself.
It’s hard to stand there and not watch. What else are you going to look at? But that means you might get a few thin𝓀gs spoiled for you by watching someone else play, or perhaps even feel some backseat game rage if you realise the solution when the person playing hasn’t quite figured it out yet. If a game is particularly linear, you might wonder why you should bother playing after seeing someone else complete the demo.
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth Doesn't Leave Its Button Mashing Roots Behind
You can still button mash beat down with Kiryu in Like a Dragon: Infiniཧte Wealth.
At past conventions, I’ve made the mistake of watching others play puzzle games and getting hands-on afterwards just isn’t the same when you’ve already seen someone figure out the solution. Conversely, sandbox games like city builders or open-world games are alꦑways different, so they don’t suffer the same fate.
At EGX in London, the indie that caught my attention the most was Leximan. It’s a narrative puzzle game that has you stepping into the role of a wizard who studies Leximancy, a special magic that utilises the power of words. I was eager to get some time with it, so I⛦ lurked at the booth until a spot freed up, but that meant seeing what each player was doing.
The way that battles work is that fragments of words move around the screen, and you have to drag and drop them to spell out full words in order to cast a spell. As♋ usual, I couldn’t resist watching and got a bit twitchy as I watched one player struggle to figure out what to do with a golem and a fire demon. I knew if I were playing, I would pair “SQUA” and “SH” to make “SQUASH”. Instead, after some time, they created “SASQUATCH”. The golem turned to their wizard and declared that sasquatches don’t exist, before resuming the battle and prompting them to cast a different spell.
It was a funny little joke that I wouldn’t have seen if I had been playing, so for once, I was glad to see how a game unfolded with someone else at the wheel. As I watched them continue through the demo, I wondered what other fun choices there were or whether bat💟tles could have different outcomes. As it turns out, they can.
There’s a mirror that says you can’t pass until you look into it, and in the following battle, I watched another player choose “BREAK” to smash it. This caused an angrier mirror demon to arrive that they had to deal with. In the same situation, I opted for “GAZE”, and the mirror ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚthanked me, allowing me to skip the other mirror demon battle entirely. That’s the beauty of the different word fragments that scramble around the screen, there are multiple options you can pick.
Casting spells isn’t just restricted to battles, as you can also cast in the overworld and discover little secrets and events you wouldn’t have otherwise. Casting “ENLARGE” allowed me to access another room, which saw me thrown into a strange muscle-off with another wizard that had us casting✅ spells to beef♉ our bodies up to get stronger.
The demo gave a great taste of what Leximan offers with its combination of quirky gameplay and silly humour, and watching others play sold me on its replayability and the differentꦐ options at your dꦅisposal. It doesn’t have a set launch date yet, but you can .