Founded in 2009, Devolver Digital is an indie games publisher that has
made a name for itself with the unique off-beat type of games that it publishes,
and are the ones to finally bring the cult Japanese Xbox game Metal Wolf Chaos
to the west as Metal Wolf Chaos XD. More recently, the publisher had an increased presence at
E3 with their surprisingly well-crafted and funny pre-recorded press
conferences that poke fun at the nature of press conferences (with some actual
announcements thrown in), including a full-on parody of Nintendo
Direct as Devolver Direct. Their last conference, also a Devolver Direct, ties
up a four-year storyline and is a masterful satire of video game marketing in
the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the handful of actual video game
announcements was one for the immediately-released Devolverland Expo, billed as a “first-person
marketing simulator”, which features some additional video game announcements
under the guise of a game in which you explore an abandoned convention hall.
Since the game is free on Steam, I decided to give it a try and got a lot more than what I bargained for.
