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Early Saturday morning I packed up my five-year-old daughter and headed to the convention center located a few minutes north of Salt Lake City. I was surprised to find a crowded parking lot with a brief line to enter the convention. Turns out this year was a new high for the convention. Utah may not have the largest population, but the gamer density is substantial. This was the first year the convention had a dedicated exhibitor hall. Since that's my usual speed at conventions, we headed right in.
First off we checked out Glyph a dice-building battle game. It was a bit much for my 5yo, but she did get some awesome photos. (Did I fail to mention that she was the photographer for the event?)
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Following Glyph, we checked out Moods of the Mad King. This is sort of a set collection game in which you are aiming to collect a complete three-card set. I "won" the demo and this resulted in a new photography rule: The winner must take a "selfie", as witnessed below.
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We decided to leave the hall to explore the rest of the convention and ended up running into some folks from Roxley on the main gaming floor. They gave us a demo of Dice Throne: Season One and let us know that Dice Throne: Season Two is still on Kickstarter. My daughter was also able to perfect some action shots.
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Back into the exhibitor hall! We swung by the Gamelyn Games booth, but it was pretty packed. We did manage to grab a few shots of Heroes of Land, Air & Sea, which was on display. That game looks like an amazing toy.
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I was surprised to see Strawberry Studio at this show. They were playing What's Up, which I enjoyed in app form, and Pyramid of the Sun. What really caught our eye was Scare It!, their newest game coming in May 2018. It's a fun little matching game in which you are trying to scare other animals away while keeping your animals on the board.
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It was then time for a lunch break, which is an essential part of any convention experience. When we got back, we headed over to try Wet Blanket (which does not have a BGG listing, for shame!); this is a light game about pulling people away from a party. At the same booth we checked out Ignite, a new type of confrontational deck-building game coming to Kickstarter soon.
After that, we finally had a chance to check out a game my daughter had been eyeing since the morning: Snowball Fight. This war variant was all right, but the best part was that my daughter won! Cue selfie.
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Maybe it's because they're headed to GAMA or maybe they just want to go skiing, but Eagle-Gryphon Games was on the scene. They were showing off a prototype of Fleet:
The Dice Game, which will be hitting Kickstarter soon. This roll-and-write game looks pretty deep for a dice game (summoning Suz of The Dice Tower).
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Our day was nearly at an end. We had the chance to play a prototype game about dinosaurs eating food and say hi to a few folks. Before rolling out, we had a chance to stop by the Red Raven Games booth. They had some early copies of Empires of the Void II available at the show and a sneak preview of Near and Far: Amber Mines. My daughter nailed a ECU of the cover.
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And that was our day. All in all it was a great time at SaltCON, and it seems like I may be back in 2019. Thanks for reading, and give a shout out to my 5yo photographer...
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