If you’re following myself, or any of the other UK based writers from Gamer Social Club over on Twitter or Bluesky, you might have noticed that we managed to organise a team day out last week. It was 20C on Friday when we all met up in London, and as tempting as it might have been to spend all day in the sun drinking beers, we were there for work. And that work was trying out loads of games at the New Game Plus event at 2025’s London Games Festival!
New Game Plus
New Game Plus is a new addition to this year’s London Games Festival (a yearly celebration of video games that surrounds the Video Game BAFTAs), and it’s a very welcome one at that.
Held in the London Museum Spaces at 150 London Wall, New Game Plus had over 70 playable game demos set up and ready to try out from indie developers all over the world. Their inaugural exhibition also saw them partnering up with BitSummit Roadshow, the on-the-road version of the Kyoto-based indie game event BitSummit, to show off a selection of Japanese-made indie titles.
Throughout Thursday and Friday, the public, content creators, and other industry professionals were invited to take part in conferences from professionals in the games industry, talk to developers and publishers about their upcoming titles, and – most importantly – try out lots of new indie games coming soon! For each title you played, you could also get your entrance QR code scanned and then redeem merch at the end. It was a fun system, and we all got to go home with some pretty sweet badges.
Games Galore
Now, obviously the main draw for the event was the ability to try out all the amazing games on offer. We each had a few standouts before the event that we were especially looking forward to trying, but you really have to go to an event like this to understand how exciting it is to be surrounded by games that you can just sit down and try out. Between the 4 of us, we must have tried around 50 of the titles on offer, which is a serious stint for essentially one day.
Almost all of the booths also featured the devs of each game (or a rep from the publisher) to give information and answer questions about the development and inspiration behind each title. So many of these conversations were absolutely magical, hearing all of the stories and journeys each team had went on to get their games to the place they are now was incredibly inspiring, and I’d highly recommend UK based gamers trying to attend next year (or an event like it) if they love games; or are looking to start their own journey into a career in the games industry.
We’ll be posting individual articles about our highlight games in the next few days, so stay tuned for some Wishlist recommendations from the team. And we have a whole host of developer interviews lined up, so we can share some of the insights about some of the titles and their inspirations directly from the people making them. Also, keep an eye on the monthly Demo Discs coming up for titles you can also try out.
Wrap Up!
New Game Plus was a great addition to the London Games Festival this year, and given how successful it seemed, we hope it makes a return next year – although potentially in a slightly bigger venue, as the downstairs section in particular was a bit cramped for how many games they had packed in! If it does return next year, I know I’ll certainly be going back to talk to devs, play amazing games, and last but definitely not least, hang out with this bunch of scoundrels.
