The Road to AdventureX 2026 - Part One

Which famous adventure game community members will I meet this year?

The news is out! We already knew that AdventureX, THE narrative games convention, will be taking place on November 7 & 8 in the same venue as last year, the LSBU Hub building in the Elephant & Castle part of London. But this week, the speakers and panels have been announced as well. Time to put together my personal schedule for those two days!

It's Dave Gilbert, people! Waaaa!!!

First up is adventure game legend Dave Gilbert. And yes, you can call someone a legend when they get to celebrated the 20th anniversary of their development and publishing house, Wadjet Eye Games. And that's exactly what Dave will be talking about: 20 years of Wadjet Eye, from The Shivah to the upcoming Nighthawks (and perhaps even some sneak peeks on Ben Chandler's Gilt?) I haven't played all their games yet (for shame!) but this will definitely be a good incentive to fill that gaming cultural gap!

Matt Aukamp, one half of the Save Your Game podcast!

I certainly don't know every speaker or panel member, but there are still two key note speakers left to be announced. Last year the big surprise was Dominic Armato, so I'm very curious to find out which big names will show up this year. But I'll definitely end the first day listening to a live Save Your Game podcast by Matt Aukamp and Sarah Wilson (better known as PushingUpRoses). I have to make a confession, though: I'm very bad when it comes to listening to podcasts or watching online videos, so this will probably be the first episode I listen to...

Voice actor extraordinaire Sally Beaumont

On Sunday, I can't miss the talks of BAFTA Breakthrough Sally Beaumont, one of my favorite voice actors talking about her art, and Francisco González, giving a talk about remakes, reboots and remasters. I'm always surprised (in a good way!) to hear Sally in a new game I'm playing, and I try to keep up on Francisco's new Project Lion game after his amazing Rosewater last year.

Amazing storyteller Francisco González

There will be loads of other speakers at AdventureX this year: Märten Rattasepp, Aoife Gleeson, James Bore, Holly Nielsen, Jon Ingold, Jess Haskin, just to name a few. You can find the entire speaker list on the AdventureX website. But I'm definitely looking forward to the final panel on Sunday about detective/deduction games, hosted by Laura Cress and featuring developers Will Ackermann, Treasa McCabe, Robin Ward and Tim Sheinman, since I love playing those games (I have just finished Robin Ward's The Incident at Galley House) and I'm really curious to find out how they go about putting their games together.

You can find the entire schedule on the AdventureX website.

Of course there's more to AdventureX than speakers and panels. There will be loads of games to play as well! We don't know yet which titles made the selection, but once they're announced I'll be back with a list of my favorites as well!