Me and Ronja recently travelled to Brighton in the south of England for the Develop conference. It was a smooth 9-hour drive from Glasgow to Brighton – on our way we briefly stopped in Oxford, and spent a day in Thorpe Park. I assumed we would beat the school holidays, but plenty of kids were on school trips at the theme park, so it was way more crowded than we liked. Eventually we managed to ride most of the rides we wanted to do, except for Swarm, which broke down. It’s a shame that Saw: The Ride is so rough and painful, otherwise it would be a top-tier rollercoaster with awesome horror theming. Nemesis Inferno, Stealth and Walking Dead were good fun, as were the water rides. Anyway, I’d definitely like to visit again on a less busy day.
The conference itself was also incredibly busy – apparently the busiest year by far. We browsed some indie games at the expo, and met up with a few developer friends we knew from Twitter and other events. We met up with The Super Flash Brothers, Damp Gnat, Grey Alien Games, Lowtek Games, Space Spy, and others. We were hoping to meet the developers of Among Us, but missed them by a day – maybe next time.
Overall, time was mostly spent just chatting, eating and drinking with industry people. We also made room to do general tourist stuff around Brighton – we walked around the Royal Pavilion, rode a crappy rollercoaster on the pier, and went up the i360 tower, which while expensive, gives a very nice view of the city from 160 meters up. I’ve been to few seaside cities this year, including Blackpool, Skegness and Llandudno, and I think Brighton had the most interesting and presentable coastline to visit as a tourist.
Anyway, on the drive home, due to bad traffic, bad weather, and rode closures, the trip took us 13 hours instead of 9! That was rough. Would consider taking the train in future, but UK train prices are way too high. In the end we laughed it off and every aspect of the trip was memorable. I will definitely attend the conference again – but maybe not every year!
