With the release of our most recent project (DAMIEN, you can catch up on all the big details here) Akupara finally found some time to get the gang together for some good old fun and games!

Two Bit Circus in downtown Los Angeles hosted us for the night and we couldn’t have had a better time. The food and drink were delectable; everyone on the team couldn’t stop raving about it. Their house made ice cream sandwiches spread like wildfire as soon as one person showed up with one, everyone else had to follow them up to the counter. The shareables were absolutely delicious (shout out to Chris for offering tater tots to everyone that came by!)

But the real attraction of the night started when we entered the Two Bit Circus Story Rooms, which function quite a bit like escape rooms. If you’re looking for spoilers or how to solve The Lost City, we’re not giving that out here. But suffice to the say the challenge was tough enough to keep us on the edge of defeat. For veteran game designers with plenty of escapes under our belts, we made it through by the skin of our teeth. Both teams finishing with about five minutes left on the clock.

For most of us, we finished out the night playing in Two Bit’s really awesome arcade. They have the classics for sure, but the ones that drew our attention were the games that we’d never seen or played before.

Killer Queen is a ten man five vs five game that got everybody really hyped. It’s a lot like a sport where there are multiple win conditions; a military victory, where you kill the enemy queen three times; an economic victory, where you gather berries and bring them back to your hive; or a snail victory, by bringing a giant snail from one side of the map to the other. Killer Queen was developed for the arcade by BumbleBear Games, but is scheduled to come out on home consoles and PC later this year.

Another game that we have to highlight is Hidden in Plain Sight, which already has a Steam release for local multiplayer. Hidden in Plain Sight puts four players in the shoes of one of dozens of NPCs, where it’s their job to convince the other players that they’re just meandering across the screen according to AI and algorithms, not motivated to win the game as a PC. There’s a bunch of different mini games with different tactics and strategies associated with each ofthem and it comes very highly recommended.

We had an absolute blast at Two Bit Circus. Everyone there was kind, quick and courteous and they made our party insanely fun. If you want more information on Two Bit Circus, check them out here.