They play for 28 hours! We did it and it was pretty cool o/
Well... not all those hours were spent actually playing, we also had to decide what to play next! With more than 500 games available at the event, this sometimes took a while :)
You can picture 3 rooms like the one below, full of meeples, cards, coins and fun.
It was the 16th edition of the festival 24h Chaud les Jeux! in Cholet. The festival name (and the association behind it) is a well-chosen self-referential pun! It translates to something like "hot for games", and the chaud les sounds exactly the same as the city's name. French people, especially hairdressing owners, love their jeu de mots.
The festival is made not only for hardcore gamers: it's open for anyone that passes by. I always find it heart-warming to see friends and family sitting around, just enjoying their company on a Sunday afternoon, while they fight furiously for the control of Tokyo, or accuse each other of being a Moriarty malfeasant ready to explode the Big Ben, or just casually arranging their azulejos the best they can.
For my part, I've managed to discover 9 new games and play other 2 that I already knew. The big ones were Endeavor: age of sail, Coming of age, Nemesis. I like them and would happily play another time.
Playing Nemesis for the first time at 08:00 was a difficult task hhaha! After 3 hours, we all exploded in space before coming back to Earth because one of the players decided that it HAD to auto-destroy the spaceship in order to content their desire for chaos! It was a nice play though, we were all dead and happy (and ready for lunch).
We made good choices of lighter party games to cool down: Decrypto, Nosferatu and Cabanga!.
A big Thank You! for the game club Chaud les jeux for all the time and effort you've put into this event. I'll be happy to see you again next time.