I love a convention and 2025’s been a surprisingly big year for me with them (with two left to go between Thought Bubble and Dragonmeet). The thing is, a gaming convention is more than just games. 

Here’s my list of top five non-game things from Essen Spiel 2025, presented in no particular order:

Runner Up: StreetPass

I love my 3DS. It was my favourite console for years, beaten only by the Switch. StreetPass was a fun thing which meant I took my 3DS everywhere with me for a long time. If you passed someone within about 30 feet or so, you’d get a copy of their Mii avatar, puzzle pieces for several Nintendo-themed puzzles and games.

Unfortunately the 3DS is no longer a popular console and while I’ll take it out sometimes and get a StreetPass hit, it rarely happens. That said, I had three whole StreetPass hits!

Käsebrezel

On the first day of the con I was eager not to get analysis paralysis when ordering food, so I just went for a giant pretzel. That was pretty good. Then the next day I discovered one of the food stands also sold them covered in cheese. Amazing.

The Weird Music We Blamed on Overly Fancy Gaming Tables

In some of the halls you could hear a sudden burst of music starting and stopping. It was distracting during some of the teaches being given to us and we weren’t sure where it was coming from.

Steve and I were both talking about gaming tables with some aspirational thoughts to him moving and me moving some rooms around in my house. Some of them were ludicrous, with lighting, effects and in one case a central map which could be raised and lowered. We decided it was probably the tables making the noise.

I did actually find one of the sources of the noise in the pizza food truck in the outside part of the galleria. It would occasionally blast out some radio and with open doors, maybe that was where some of the noises came from, but I’m still going to say that they were all overly deluxe gaming tables.

The App

I try and give up on the UK Games Expo app each year, so I was doubtful about the Spiel app. Then Steve explained what they’ve done and I instantly downloaded it.

The app has a map of the eight halls, a list of events, vendors and games, and they all work beautifully.

I checked off around 50 vendors to check out and half that in specific games, putting a star on them in their respective categories. The map part could zoom into specific halls so you can see the stands. Even better, you could select the star and view your favourites on the map. This was incredibly helpful. You could also get it to plot out a path between stalls and check them off as you saw them.

I admit I put too many things on my app, but by Sunday I had enough checked off to make more dedicated battle plans about where to go.

Weird mascots

I’m very familiar with the Catan sheep at each Expo and sometimes you’ll get things like the Feed the Kraken designer bringing a soft toy octopus, but this con went to the next level.

Here’s a selection of mascots I saw, a number of whom were disturbing, but always a delight to find.

The company

Last and definitely not least is the main reason for going along… the company. Steve is one of my oldest friends, having been shoved in my direction by a mutual friend who said he wanted to learn about RPGs. We met Alex a few years later when he went to our Magic (and other CCGs) night. The pair were part of some of the formative years of me as a roleplayer and were more than just players in my group. We were a family, and while folks have moved away, had families of their own and gaming groups of their own (in Alex’s case all the way across the world), I still love them both.

The pair were very patient with me sharing my varied hyperfixations (X-Men and indie RPGs mainly), and it felt incredibly comfortable being able to just hang out with them at a convention with no real expectations. While we’re all older than we were at other cons, we would leave the convention early, grab food and play some games before turning in. Steve showed us the start of Peacemaker Season Two on one evening when we were all gamed and people’d out. Unfortunately the noises Alex and I made during the night meant Steve making a self-proclaimed ‘nest’ in the hallway in our AirBnB, but other than that, it was an extremely chill time. 

We’ve said we’ll have to do something similar for our joint 50ths, and hopefully we’ll be able to meet up some time before then, too.