IWOCon 2021

There are several gems of a game in this convention. But the whole convention part is a poor attempt to fill in the void of physically being in a convention. It feels like an asset flipper was hired to make an indie convention. The performance is horrible the character controls are really janky. The sound options in game do1n't work, and some booths are just designed so poorly where you just don't want to even bother watching the video. There is no point playing this. All the information you can find is all on the website anyways. You'll stumble around Asset Flip Island checking to see if you missed a game and accidently touch the water and respawn. Theres a pointless character hat gimmick, and a completely useless and buggy pirate ship with cannons. Literally just browse the games on their website, it'll save your power bill and you'll get more out of it.

one of the booth's video was private (:

This is interesting. I would of liked the option to teleport to each "booth" instead of teleport to just one of many islands. I found it very difficult to navigate at first and know I still have much more to explore. I saw a roller coaster ride but didn't know what island that was on or how to get there to get on the ride. This is the second game I have seen that has done a "convention' style. The first one called "DevolverlandExpo", was more linear , break in a closed Expo, avoid getting caught,and at the end, fought in a big boss battle finale and I thought that was cool. I didn't see any of that in this one and this convention is very open in letting one explore or go in any direction, start and end wherever. I guess I give this a thumbs up but again I would like to teleport to each booth instead of just an island, perhaps a list of what is at each island would help. Hope there is a third and many more Expo/Convention style game on Steam that are more realistic and do not have just a pirate theme or just break in theme to it, but those are both good and something different that I give a thumbs up to. I just want something more realistic and more of a simulation of a real expo/convention.

Fantastic idea, the team put a lot of effort into this charming digital convention for games most people might overlook. A lot of gems in here for sure, definetly worth a look!

I'd review it mixed if I could. On one hand it's great to discover some new indie games, I added to my wishlist [and future wallet suffering] quite a bit... but, I gave up. Which is the other hand of it. The level design is so vast and tedious that it's just a chore to visit each booth. Add the horrible framerate and even at times terrible geometry, I consistently fell through one of the large brides and would often 'climb' something by teleporting away from where I was and then climbing the middle of the air and then falling rather than climb what I intended. It's just a mess. Compared to the Devolver Expo (gold standard for this idea imo), and even ROG Citadel XV. And some of the displays clearly had less attention to them, idk if that's up to the devs or what but it was weird to see some where it was just three screenshots and the trailer and nothing else to showcase the game. If you want to slog through the level design and overly large islands and be annoyed while doing it, then it is worth checking out. If not, then you should just check Steam more thoroughly or click the expo banner on the top of this store page [idk if it'll always be there though]. I did have a quite a few of the games already on my wishlist so it's not like they're all hidden away or new to me. I wish it had just been a bit more straight forward in design. Also don't get the pirate theme. Oh and the lighting sucks. You pick a character and then you're 3x darker in the sunlight than the picture showed. It's like you're almost always in shadow, and in shadows it's ridiculous. I'm going to give it a 'no' just because coming out of it I am really annoyed, especially that I couldn't explore it all. I 'could' have, but it just was taking so damn long and to navigate was so obnoxious that I'm too frustrated to be nice and give it 'yes'. Like I said, I'm mixed on it but right now it's more negative while I write this. I would suggest getting the soundtrack tho.

This far exceeded my expectations! If you miss the feel of cons, this will get you your fix. I felt like I was actually at a con but without the crowds, lines, and smells. Each game has its own booth with a large screen 'tv' playing a trailer as well as artwork featured for each game. Pressing 1 brings you to that page's site/Steam page which is SO convenient. The graphics are also way better than anything I expected so kudos to the whole team! This was a job well done.

I respect the concept, but I feel IWO were way to ambitious with this. Conceptually it sounds great: multiple large pirate themed islands with loads of games to discover, and fun pirate-y activities like sailing ships and shooting cannonballs! But in practice it doesn't really work... [h1]The Island[/h1] First of all, the islands in question aren't really special. They're made up entirely of Unreal Marketplace assets (specifically "Pirate Island"), and while that isn't necessarily a bad thing, there is a distinct lack of cohesion. Like, you'll have these fairly generic looking islands, and then a bunch of stalls sort of haphazardly dotted all around. The nicest looking island is the island you start on...which judging from the screenshots on the "Pirate Island" store page is literally just the example island with a few stalls dropped in, which certainly explains why the other islands look so different in quality. Considering the pirate island theme plays a large part in the con's advertising, a lot more care should've been put into making the islands look and play well. [h1]The Pirate-y Activities[/h1] You can sail a boat to each of the islands! It's really clunky, and it's much easier to use the fast travel option instead. Your boat can fire cannonballs! But I didn't come across any enemies. You can rapid-fire cannonballs by quickly tapping the mouse! I don't think that's supposed to happen. You can use a sword and a gun! The gun doesn't line up with the target reticule when firing something close to you, and there doesn't seem to be a point to either of these? Again, from what I played there are no enemies, and there's no multiplayer so there's no PvP tomfoolery...i'm starting to wonder if these were just other Unreal Marketplace assets sort of thrown in there? [h1]Final Thoughts[/h1] It's a really cool idea executed very poorly. I feel the main issue is with the devs being over-ambitious; by trying to feature so many games spread across multiple islands, it's clear the devs ended up spreading themselves too thinly. If they restricted it to just the one small island, built from the ground up, with a much smaller selection of indie games, and without any of the unnecessary stuff, this could've been a much more polished and enjoyable experience that really does the featured games justice.