Editor's Note: The following demo review opportunity came courtesy of Tribeca Games. This title and other worthy competitors are vying for awards in the first-ever games category at the long-running festival. Please keep in mind that these reviews are based on demos, all of which vary in length from 20 minutes to an hour, and are not necessarily fully representative of the final, finished game. Our intent is to give you a sense of what makes these games unique, how well the games executed the developers' vision, and to put them on your radar before everyone you know is playing them.

From developer Mighty Yell and publisher Skybound Games comes The Big Con, a candy-coated and colorful comedy game that sees players living out the typical '90s teenage experience: Grifting your way across America by committing a series of small crimes!

Now that may not be your memory of life in the '90s (it certainly wasn't mine), but hey, video games can be all about wish fulfillment and living out otherwise dangerous or fantastical lives, right? That's what The Big Con sets out to do, but unfortunately whiffs on the execution, only delivering a disconnected pastiche of '90s nostalgia that's more smirking satire than loving homage.

Here's the official synopsis:

Hustle your way across ‘90s America as a runaway teen con artist. Choose how to make your scratch as you don disguises, pick pockets, and rip people off in this comedic crime-filled adventure. Experience the totally rad '90s in all its plaid and payphone glory!

Check out the announcement teaser here to get a sense of The Big Con, which you can wishlist on Steam now and even check out the demo for yourself:

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Being perfectly fair, popping into The Big Con mid-story probably wasn't the best option for the demo. All we know is that we play a teenager who's somehow going to come up with nearly $100,000 in order to help our mom and her struggling business. How are we going to do that? By teaming up with a grifter and con artist named Ted and engaging in petty crimes, of course. Pretty typical '90s teenage stuff. Little bit of pickpocketing here, a touch of wheedling and cajoling there, and before you know it, we're skipping band camp, lying to our mom, and doing pretty much whatever Ted says. It's all rather ... odd, but we'll go with it. The main issue here isn't the silly story and setup but the fact that it feels utterly disconnected from the '90s-inspired world it's set in.

The Big Con is funny enough on its own merits, I'll give it that. It's got a strange obsession with corn puns that's honestly quite charming in its own way. But in the demo, at least, the '90s nods were either so few and far between or so superficial -- pay phones exist, people wore plaid, VHS was the height of media storage technology -- that the whole thing felt like a second-hand gag rather than a first-hand remembrance. The town square and the mall felt weirdly empty and devoid of life, save for easy pickpocketing marks, which is directly counter to the way these thriving places were 20+ years ago. And that's just one example of The Big Con's missed opportunities.

Every game has a story to tell, but this game seems to be more interested in superficial observations and a half-baked narrative. The Big Con feels more like a meme than a meaningful memory.

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