The LudoNarraCon festival is back today with over 30 free demos

LudoNarraCon returns from today until Monday for its fourth year of showcasing games that focus on story, story, story. The whole thing is being hosted digitally on Steam, and features 12 live panels, along with ‘fireside chats’ with some of the devs behind the festival’s line-up. Some of those are games you might be familiar with, like Inkle’s Overboard, Anomaly Games’ The Fermi Paradox and Silverstring Media’s Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between. Panelists and fireside chatters include Sam Barlow of Telling Lies renown, 80 Days’ writer Meghna Jayanth, and Lucas “Return Of The Obra Dinn” Pope.

More than 40 games are exhibiting at this year’s LudoNarraCon with 33 sporting free demos. There’s a broad range of stories, from learning old school telecommunications tech in ALJO Games’ Morsecheating people in Nerial’s tricksy 18th-century scumbag simulator Card Sharkto Fuzzy Ghost’s magnificent sounding Queer Man Peering Into A Rock Pool.jpg. Probably the standout here for me though is Northway Games’ I Was A Teenage Exocolonist, which is apparently a story-led life simulator set on an alien planet with card battles and plenty of teen angst. Sounds much like my own adolescence.

LudoNarraCon is organized by publisher Fellow Traveller, who just released the tabletop-esque Citizen Sleeper today too. In his Citizen Sleeper review, Brendy said: “Throwing off the shackles of a faceless process governing your life is a recurring theme in this blend of sci-fi RPG and interactive fiction, and it makes for a strong rags-to-ramen story of one robot on the run. Even when the game’s own systems of dice and clocks clash with its stories of human interest, it is the people who come out on top.”

LudoNarraCon runs from today until May 9th on Steam. The full schedule of panels is over here on LudoNarraCon’s site.

Disclaimer: Xalavier Nelson Jr. is appearing in panels at this year’s LudoNarraCon and writes for RPS from time to time.