UnexpectedGames

Day of the Devs 2026

March 8, 2026; It was a beautifully sunny Sunday at The Midway in San Francisco, California. My husband and I drove into the city the night before and caught bits and pieces of the Chinese New Year Parade. After a late night out and an early morning trip to the Nintendo SAN FRANCISCO store (where I spent way more than I should have), we discovered a tucked-away dumpling place for lunch before heading to the event. This was my first time attending Day of the Devs, so I didn’t know what to expect. Two lines formed in front of the venue, one for general admission and another for developers, games media, and VIP. Despite having tickets, they did not ask to see them. Instead, they simply checked your license and slapped a wristband on you if you felt so inclined to partake in alcoholic beverages. The vibes felt good and the atmosphere calm, despite the madness going on here in the United States and abroad. Two gentlemen behind me appeared to be indie developers, and they were discussing the “state of things”, so to speak. The Game Developers Conference (GDC) was also being held in the coming week, so many of their international colleagues were not going to be in attendance due to the ongoing atrocities caused by our current administration (it’s also extremely expensive to travel right now). At one point, while waiting in line, Tim Schafer of Double Fine made his way down the lane, greeting attendees and filming a short video along the way. I was a little star struck, I’m not going to lie, but I kept my cool. After entering The Midway, we found ourselves in a hallway that connected to its numerous rooms. The venue consisted of one larger room fitted with a bar and a stage (where a DJ played music), two medium-sized rooms, a games media area, a smaller room dedicated to Double Fine’s Kiln, and a back porch area (which we did not explore). The larger room housed most of the games, but it was fairly dark and a bit hard to navigate (especially once more people started to arrive). I think my biggest issue with the event was the lack of timers for the demos. Most games had only one station, so if someone was trying a game and there was no one there to monitor the session, you could ostensibly sit there forever, but more on that later.

Prince’s Court & Princess’s Realm

The first game I played was Queen’s Domain, developed by Freshly Baked Games. As someone who grew up playing From Software’s flagship series, King’s Field, I’m glad indie developers are making spiritual successors of sorts (since From Software refuses to do so, if you don’t count the “Souls” games). With that said, I don’t think anyone has fully captured what made King’s Field what it was, yet… Last year, we saw Caput Mortum, another first-person dungeon crawler of sorts that referenced King’s Field in the control scheme configuration (of all places). From what I’ve played of Caput Mortum, it’s a more linear, puzzle-oriented adventure game that takes place in a confined space. Queen’s Domain looks to be lot more open-ended and exploration-based, something more akin to King’s Field II (III in NA) or King’s Field IV: The Ancient City on the PlayStation 2. There are a ton of fan-made King’s Field projects, many of which can be found here. There’s definitely a hardcore community (and desire) for From Software’s older catalog of games. It still blows my mind that they never made King’s Field VR for PSVR, but I digress…

King’s Field games are brutal. When you step off of a cliff or fall into water, you drop like a rock and it’s GAME OVER. In Queen’s Domain, you do not die immediately when you attempt to go for a swim. Perhaps there are (classic) difficulty modes that are a bit more punishing? From my limited time with the demo, I did see that different weapons have varying attack speeds. Naturally, a giant mace swings slower, so it’ll leave you more vulnerable than say having a short sword equipped. I think the attention to movement and attack speed animations is critical in making a “King’s Field-like”. In King’s Field, it felt like you had cinder blocks tied to your feet and your blades were coated in molasses. I feel like a lot of these King’s Field-likes (Queen’s Domain included) feel more in-line with DOOM, Quake or even Hexen, in terms of their overall game-feel. With that said, when you pick-up items, they are fully modeled in 3D and rotate until you place them in your inventory, just like in King’s Field. I think the menus have a nice look to them and there’s even a bestiary with enemy descriptions! The enemy variety appears to be relatively decent, too. One particularly annoying enemy were these giant flowers with eyes that shoot lasers. They were everywhere and very annoying!

I really wanted to talk to the developers at the booth, but they were always preoccupied. I only played the demo once, but I observed others play it when I could. After standing around at their booth for a bit, one of the developers from Queen’s Domain walked over to me because they recognized my Ys hoodie! We talked a bit about the most recent games and to my surprise, they mentioned they wanted to make an Ys-style game. We talked about whether or not it would be more like the older “Bumpslash” style games or something more modern. I mentioned Angeline Era (another indie game by Analgesic Productions that was heavily inspired by the Bumpslash combat found in the older Ys titles) and he knew of it. I also asked if there were plans to release the game on consoles and they said it was something to consider with their publisher. A demo for this game is also available on Steam and while I could have written about the game based on the demo that’s online, being there in-person at Day of the Devs gave me an opportunity to chat with the developers, so hopefully my “coverage” is slightly more interesting because of that. Noclip did a great quick-look on the game, too.

A Far Cry Away from Zelda

Next, I managed to try Tire Boy, developed by a handful of individuals including Corey Martin, Andy Chmilenko, Thomas Tobin, Ian Wang, Adam Myhill, and Gerald Orban. From what I could see, two of the developers were present at the station for this demo. I spoke with one of the devs, a former Ubisoft developer who apparently worked on FarCry games, “That’s why the maps are so big…“, he joked at one point. I’m not exactly sure what I’d describe Tire Boy to, but it seemed early in development (and a bit rough). It’s seemingly a 3D action-adventure game of sorts that clearly takes inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (BotW). In fact, I believe the developer described the game as “Sonic meets Zelda”. The demo took place on one of five(?) maps/biomes planned for the full release. The island was quite large, but since you’re a boy in a tire, you can roll around pretty quickly. Tire Boy seems to be yet another “everything” game; there were giant tree roots you could grind on, enemies to fight (with a 3D Zelda-style lock-on), a flower that acted like the glider from BotW, a mini-map in the bottom right corner of the screen, an inventory (with unbreakable weapons since the developer didn’t like that weapons had durability in BotW), NPCs to talk to, side quests to complete, and items to collect.

The developer tried to explain the story to me, but it was hard to follow given the noise in the room. Apparently, you’re trying to get home to your family of tire people, but you’re shipwrecked on an island full of fish folk and other strange inhabitants? Maybe you’re from a family of tires that needs to get back to a car that’s missing its wheels (hire me, please, I’ve got ideas for days!) I asked the developer if you’ll upgrade Tire Boy to go faster and he did mention that the tire will get snow chains for when rolling around in the snow/on ice, which sounded like a neat mechanic. If I was working on this game, I’d go all in the tire theme. What if your tires had an air pressure gauge and you’d have to stop at gas station-like establishments to repair yourself? I’d have enemies throw done spike strips, too. Finally, I’m happy to report that Tire Boy did have a timer for its demo! I want to say it was somewhere between 8 and 10 minutes. When my time was almost up, he mentioned a secret boss that I could attempt before calling it quits. I made my way over to the boss and the developer did mention that I could block and parry its attacks. I don’t believe I fully understood how to perform this technique, but I did beat him. I was also apparently the first person to nail one of the platforming quests on the first try. Pro Gamer™ here.

A Smashing Good Time?

Finally, there was Kiln, developed by Double Fine, which had its own dedicated line and room. I wanted to try it before we left for the day, so we got in line just as another group was starting. After a 10 to 15 minute wait, it was our time to sculpt some clay. If you’re not familiar with the game, Kiln is Double Fine’s latest release, hot off the heels of last year’s Keeper (a cinematic adventure game where you play as a sentient lighthouse — which made my Top 10 last year). Kiln is a competitive multiplayer game where you make your own pottery and then take them to battle. The demo more or less featured the pottery-making aspect of the game along with a Local Area Network (LAN) match between two teams in the room. First, you choose the size of your pottery; small, medium or large. The size of your pot has advantages/disadvantages out on the battlefield. The smaller your vase, the more quickly you can move around and there are spots on the maps where you can squeeze through smaller cracks in the environment. If you opt for a larger piece of pottery, you’ll naturally move slower, but you can hold more water and take more damage. The goal of the match is to defend your kiln’s fire from being doused while attempting to destroy the other team’s base.

After making a medium-sized vase of sorts, you’re given the option to customize your pot with stickers. I didn’t have a ton of time to decorate, however, so I didn’t get a chance to add much of anything. When you finalize your creation, you place your pot on the “top shelf”, so to speak, which places you, along with everyone else, into a lobby until the match begins. Unfortunately, my session had a lot of input delay and was riddled with lag (which may have been due to the LAN setup?) I did enjoy defending our kiln, however. While your abilities are on cooldowns, I managed to guard our base and bashed any rival pot from getting too close. I can’t recall if our team won or not, but I understood the appeal to it all immediately. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the elephant in the room, though. I’m extremely worried about Double Fine. As much as I love their output lately, considering they’re still under Microsoft’s umbrella, I can’t see passion projects like Kiln and Keeper keeping them afloat. No one truly knows what’s happening behind the scenes (for all we know, they’re doing totally fine… get it?) but it’s hard to ignore the writing on the wall. If you feel so inclined to check it out, Kiln’s open beta starts in a few days at the time of writing this. Please protect Double Fine at all costs and support them where you can!

I really enjoyed my time at Day of the Devs and would love to attend the event again next year. There were a bunch of games I wanted to play, including TANUKI: Pon’s Summer, About Fishing, Awaysis, Ayna: Shattered Truth, Ballgame, Dead as Disco, Dosa Divas, Jigrift, People of Note, Soundgrass, and more, but it was difficult to get your hands on a lot of them. A lot of these games do have Steam demos, though. With that said, I think the event could be improved in a few ways; 1) ensure that one of the developers of the game will be there at their station (and have someone reset the demo when a player is done!), 2) require all demos to have a timer, and 3) consider having formal lines for each game. I feel that the true value behind Day of the Devs is potentially getting the opportunity to talk to one of the developers about their game. When you have a booth with no dev (which I think was the case for TANUKI and a few other games) and the very same demo available on Steam, I’d imagine it’s hard to justify attending the event when there’s a lot of standing around awkwardly in a room, waiting to see if someone is going to jump on the stool and put the headphones on when there’s no one there to talk to. I also found it extremely disorienting when a demo was left completed (or in the middle of a session) for the next player. If you want more indie goodness, I’d also recommend checking out Jill Grodt’s coverage over at The Indie Informer along with Kinda Funny Game’s The MIX, which featured many of the games you could have played on the show floor.

Until next time…

-Matty