Games at Anime Festival 2024: From the big to the small

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Aside from just anime and manga, gaming has a renewed focus at AFA this year, with a new stage, appearances by some big vendors, and opportunities to try out some new games.

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Central to this new push was GameOn, a new stage located on the left-most side of the convention centre. Taking place here were friendly play events hosted by different personalities like cosplayers and esports players, as well as meet-and-greet sessions. 

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Bandai Namco is one of the big names in gaming (especially in the Japanese games scene), so it only makes sense that they were here this year, with convention-goers able to try out some of their games, including Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival.

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Other games convention-goers were able to try out at the Bandai Namco booth include Death Note Killer Within, a newly released social deduction game based on the acclaimed Death Note series, as well as the currently-unreleased Nintendo Switch port of Guilty Gear -Strive-.

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Konami was also another big name at AFA this year. Located more centrally in the convention hall, the big focus of the Konami booth was Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel, the free-to-play game based on Yu-Gi-Oh!, as well as the card game's 25th anniversary. 

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Games publisher Cygames was also at AFA this year. Located near the GameOn stage, convention-goers tried out Granblue Fantasy Rising Versus, released in December 2023, and Uma Musume Party Dash, just released in August of this year.

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There were also standalone games being featured at AFA 2024, including Infinity Nikki, the fifth installment in the Nikki game series and which bills itself as a "cozy open-world game". Cookie Run Braverse, a trading card game based on Cookie Run and Neopets were also some other games found featured at AFA as well.

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Some local indie games also got to make an appearance. Near the GameOn stage, four local game developers were exhibiting their wares: Battlebrew Productions' Cuisineer, a food-based dungeon crawler, kopiforge's SEDAP!, a co-op cooking adventure game, Gearbyte Games' Identifile, an action roguelike with visuals based on OS file directories, and Springloaded's Let's Build a Dungeon, a game dev simulator where you control a company developing an MMORPG.