Here's my pictures from this year. Forgot to take enough to cover all of the stuff going on, but there are at least a few good ones:
https://imgur.com/a/sXvG9KEI
really appreciate the use of the additional location for spreading out stuff, and people. It really helped alleviate the crowd and make both the seller stands and pinball setups easier to access. It also felt like it gave me more stuff to do all day, moving back and forth between the two locations.
Only downside for me personally with that arrangement was that I wasn't naturally led through a bunch of indie developer booths, exposing me to their games and getting into conversations with them - you had to actively seek out their stuff. It seems they did get a lot of attention from other visitors though, so if it worked out for them, that's still for the best.
Speedrunners had just as horrible accoustics at last year though, which made following it as a spectator very hard.

I can understand the challenge in making it work in a hall like that though, as you don't want them to be so loud that they dominate everything else going on there. Meeting TMR was fun, he's a really friendly and talkative guy.
I won first place in the Tetris competition, which was also fun.

Unfortunate with the delay - it seems like no one had bothered actually testing the setup before the event, but as someone who has set up a bunch of stuff like that, I know that things don't always work out like you want, and unexpected things can always happen. It seemed no one at the place really had a lot of experience with making NTSC signals work though, which delayed stuff further, but fortunately it was resolved before we gave up waiting, so no worries here.

The format was a bit silly with best-of-one knockouts in a Tetris version that makes it possible for anyone to win through sheer luck, no matter how good the opponent's strategy is, due to the way lines are sent over.
However, I could tell hardly anyone in the competition really knew how to play Tetris, so anything more sensible would probably be a waste, and I did appreciate how fast everything went ahead.
What ever happened to the SMB speedrun competition though?
The orchestral concert was an amazing touch! It sounded really well, and aside from maybe a little too much Star Wars over actual video game music, I cannot say anything bad about it. Even if you weren't actively watching it, just having a live orchestra playing video game music as you walked around helped create an incredible atmosphere. I hope this will be a recurring thing in the future.
The other two concerts might not be as fortunate. Dunderpatrullen are always fun, and the sound was fine, but not a lot of people really seemed to be into it. I noticed a lot of people actually leaving the place at the time due to the loud music, which I guess wasn't really the intended effect. I enjoyed it, but I don't know if it worked out well.
Machinae Supremacy was unfortunately a disaster, but I doubt anyone needs me to tell them that. Personally I'm not a fan of their music, but I wouldn't have minded it if it at least had sounded alright. The sound was so horrible it was impossible to even stay inside the venue while they were playing, and I felt like my hearing was getting completely ravaged by the awfully loud and tinny drums. I can imagine that even if you are a fan, seeing them play like that must have been very disappointing. It ended up making us leave the place early.
I really appeciate the effort in bringing cool bands to the event, but making a rock band work in a location like that might just be an unforgiving task. I was really surprised just how well the symphonic orchestra worked in comparison, and no hard feelings against the good intentions in bringing the bands there.
Overall, the experience was even better than last year, and I definitely want to keep coming back to this event.