The fifth annual Games Convention is now underway in Leipzig, and with Germany leading the way in the genre these days, GC is the place to be for all the latest adventure news. But with the Adventure Gamers staff too tired, cranky, and still broke from E3, we couldn't attend the event ourselves. Fortunately, the German crew at Adventure-Treff is on the scene, and Jan Schneider has offered to share their experiences. The following daily reports will first appear in German on the Adventure-Treff site, and are being translated and reprinted here with permission.

August 23rd - Day One

It's 7:00 am when I wake up. Martin Lassahn, my room neighbour and temporary Adventure-Treff editorial assistant, informs me with tentative knocks on my door that I am half an hour late. Damn clock. I met my colleague Sebastian "zeebee" Walczyk for breakfast, and then it was off to the show. The ride to the convention, which was not very long thanks to the new Autobahn 38, was as uneventful as the accreditation process after we arrived.

The first event at the Games Convention was the opening press conference at 8.30 am. As expected, there were no adventures featured, but a man in a silly costume told us that the long-haired guy next to me is a pioneer of the Machinima scene, and that we should ask him anything we wanted to know on that topic. What Angela Schierholz, project director for GC, had to say was much more interesting, but still not interesting enough for this article.

After that we took a tour through the Business Center, which is an area where you can meet publishers and developers without having to be disturbed by screaming kids playing game demos. There we found where our appointments would be located later on. Our first real press conference was at the Nintendo booth, where we learned that the DS is generating incredible sales and that the Wii is pretty difficult to control. At least, Jörg Pilawa (a German show master) and the other players had a hard time getting the hang of it.

But let's get to adventures. Our first contact within the genre was at the Anaconda Theatre, where the booth babes and dtp representatives showed us the world of Anaconda games. Particularly interesting for us was Overclocked by House of Tales, which we could see in action for the first time. We especially liked the cinematic presentation with split screens, zooms, and lots of camera angles, although the backgrounds are prerendered. The logic of one puzzle was not clear to us, but we'll be able to ask the developer Martin Ganteföhr tomorrow. Also in the Anaconda Theatre was a new playable chapter of Runaway 2, though this game has been previewed quite extensively, so we won't cover that here.

Early in the afternoon, we hoped to have a look Tanita: Plasticine Dream and Dead Mountaineer's Hotel at Akella. Unfortunately, they had problems with their computers so they gave us a CD of their demonstration materials. There is no trace of Hotel on the CD, but it did contain a demo of Tanita, the claymation adventure. First impression: very colourful, very happy, and artistically so bizarre that we're wondering what the developers were smoking.

At last we had our long-awaited appointment with RTL Enterprises, who showed us the first playable scenes from Simon the Sorcerer 4. Since his last adventure, Simon has spent some years as a normal teenager, but he returns to the magic world when an evil lookalike of him appears. The new game will be more like the first two games in many ways: Simon will be mean sometimes, but not as evil as in the third game. Also, the prerendered backgrounds look much better than the ugly last game. The German version is planned to be released in February 2007, and we will have more details in our upcoming preview.

At 4pm, we had originally planned an appointment with CDV to see Jack Keane. But after the publisher changed to 10tacle only days before the GC, we weren't sure if we would see the game. But when we arrived at CDV, two of the developers from Deck 13 were there to show us the game. Jack Keane looks a bit like Ankh in the jungle, but with more details and new graphic features that make the game a bit prettier. The publisher change to 10tacle shouldn't influence the game content or release date, which is still scheduled for the first quarter of 2007.

A spontaneously-planned appointment with dtp put us under a bit of time pressure. But it allowed us to ask some questions about Undercover: Operation Wintersun to developer Harald Riegler, from Sproing. The game is almost done, and should reach stores in just a few weeks. Runaway 2 and Tony Tough 2 already contain German subtitles, so it is very probable that those games will also be done soon. We are not so sure about Belief & Betrayal, for which we only got a few new screenshots. Reprobates, by Future Games, has been postponed to Q1 2007, and the GC trailer showed little more than the teaser which is already available online.

The last appointment of our first day at GC was at bhv, where two other Deck 13 developers showed us Ankh: Heart of Osiris. This standalone expansion is meant to be at least as long as Ankh, but about 50% of the scenery is reused (though improved) material from the original game. The surprise of the day occurred when we found a Bone poster on the walls in the bhv booth. The reason: bhv will release the first two episodes of Bone with German voiceovers as Bone Gold in Germany. The boxed set will be pretty expensive compared to the online versions, retailing for about 40 euro.

The last event of the day was a concert performed by the Filmharmonic Orchestra of Prague, who played music from old and new games under maestro Andy Brick. In addition to titles from Final Fantasy VI & VII (with choir and organ), Castlevania (with the composer on the piano) and Sonic the Hedgehog, for adventure fans there was an interesting piece with the Dreamfall medley by Leon Willett. I'd tell you about the speeches following the concert, but they didn't have to do with adventures, and more importantly, I now have less than two hours left to sleep before it's time to get up and start the process all over again.

Click on next page for Day Two coverage out of GC.

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