So far, The Dangerous Kitchen have only been to three events to exhibit De Mambo; EGX Rezzed 2015, Develop Interface and the Manchester Day Games Room. All three were incredibly valuable as we learnt so much, met some fantastic people and also peered into a dark, unknown facet of human repugnance… where heinous machinations of a strange cult-like people attempt to poison innocence—but, I suppose you didn’t come here to read that…

…yet.

The Games Room in Manchester, although lacking the first-time excitement of Rezzed, was probably the best time we had at any of these events, whilst simultaneously being the most exhausting.

We woke up at 4:00am on Saturday, boarded a train at 6:30am—barely making it, set up for 10:00am and then exhibited until 6:00pm. After a ritualistic consumption, we travelled a fair distance to our Airbnb destination and were greeted and shown to our room by two cats; Coco and Bossboy. We awoke at around 7:00am on Sunday, exhibited as usual from 10:00am – 6:00pm, gorged on some fine pizza (my personal favourite part of the journey) and then boarded the train home at 8:55pm—again, barely making it. After coldly waiting for a bus and then a delayed train, we finally got home… bone-tired and ready for our inner sandmen to lull us to sleep.

One could hazard a guess and say that pre-E3 hype played a part in keeping us alive, but in all seriousness, it was the stellar reaction De Mambo got in the Town Hall that sustained us through our broken wrists, hollowed shoulder bones and sleep-deprived crazy-eyes.

Bearing in mind that we are gamers who selfishly made a game for ourselves, it was great to see small children react so positively. We’d had a few children pick up De Mambo at Rezzed—much quicker than a lot of adults and season gamers mind you—but since the Games Room was open to the general public, there were tenfold more of these wonderful little people around. There were even times when we had children about 5 years old competing with twenty something year old gamers—which was insanely glorious since they held their own. The cherry on top though, were the SNES controllers we used to play De Mambo. We saw a few adults in shock with not only seeing the SNES pads, but that children were using them, which must’ve taken them back.

We never designed De Mambo to unite the world, but seeing stuff like that gave us hope. De Mambo will usher in a new era of world peace… or more probable, drown the world in fear, famine, pestilence and—A-A-Achoo! Excuse me. The combination of cat allergies and hay fever has crippled me profusely.

Anyway back on topic, we here at The Dangerous Kitchen just wanted to thank Rock, Paper, Shotgun, David Hayward, Simon Smith, all the individuals involved in setting up the Manchester Day Games Room and everyone who played De Mambo.

We truly had a remarkable time. Thanks!

Shaun Roopra
Written by Shaun Roopra
My mission is to eradicate the life form you humans call pizza. I'm also an artist and writer at The Dangerous Kitchen.