Tildes Pop-Up Game Event: Demo Disc Days
Pop-Up Event: Demo Disc Days Today we are going to take a trip back to the 90s, when the best way to try out new games was to use a now-antiquated piece of magical circular plastic that you might...
Pop-Up Event: Demo Disc Days
Today we are going to take a trip back to the 90s, when the best way to try out new games was to use a now-antiquated piece of magical circular plastic that you might have gotten along with your subscription to something like PC Gamer, PlayStation Underground, or the Official Sega Dreamcast Magazine.
The demo disc offered gamers a small taste of a variety of different games, letting you try out the beginning levels of lots of different titles in hopes that you'd find ones you like and buy the full games.
One of the most iconic demo discs actually came with the PlayStation console itself, and featured its games laid out in a grid. This is the format we'll be exploring in this pop-up: it's our taste of the 90s, but with the games of today or yesterday or ten years ago.
Community Task: Together, we will create our own modern demo disc by filling in cells in the grid below. To fill in a cell, you must "demo" a game, which consists of:
- playing the beginning of a game,
- that you have never played before,
- for at least 30 minutes.
Choose an unfilled category below, find a game to demo that fits it, and report back here with your thoughts once you've done so! Once you successfully demo a game, it gets put into that slot.
At the end of the pop-up, we will have what may very well be the first demo disc of the 2020s featuring a spread of 42 games across multiple styles and genres!
| Arcade | RPG | Strategy | Puzzle | Racing | Platformer | Simulation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Casual | (casual arcade) | (casual rpg) | 112 Operator | Tricky Towers | Tanuki Sunset | Lunistice | shapez |
| Colorful | Chippy | (colorful rpg) | (colorful strategy) | Can of Wormholes | You Suck at Parking | (colorful platformer) | Stacklands |
| Story Rich | (story rich arcade) | (story rich rpg) | (story rich strategy) | Strange Horticulture | (story rich racing) | (Reserved) | Lakeburg Legacies |
| Retro | Gunlocked | (retro rpg) | (retro strategy) | Zombie Night Terror | Vecter | (retro platformer) | (retro simulation) |
| Dark | (dark arcade) | (dark rpg) | Ring of Pain | The Room Three | (dark racing) | (dark platformer) | (dark simulation) |
| Great Soundtrack | (great soundtrack arcade) | (great soundtrack rpg) | (great soundtrack strategy) | (great soundtrack puzzle) | (great soundtrack racing) | (great soundtrack platformer) | X4: Foundations |
Additional Info: The styles and genres have been taken from among the list of Steam's most popular tags (with a slight preference for things that give a more 90s feel). You can use Steam's search tool or Steam's library filtering to find games that fit two tags simultaneously.
If you don't use Steam, that's fine too! A game doesn't have to be "officially" tagged to fit its category. If you feel the game fits, then go for it -- no matter what platform you're playing it on. PC games are fine; console games are fine; emulated games are fine; web games are fine; phone games are fine. Any and all games are welcome on our demo disc!
Also, the game does not have to be a modern game -- just new to you. If the game is playable today and can be demoed, then it works for our demo disc!
Finally, it is fine to demo more than one game for the event. In fact, please do! We’ve got a lot of slots to fill!
Uh, what is this exactly?
It's a temporary event aimed at getting members of the Tildes community to individually participate in something built around a common theme or goal.
Check out the previous Pop-Ups for other examples:
Ludonostalgia! for ~games
Feelin' 22 for ~music
Twenty-Twenty Vision for ~movies