I attended the Salt Lake Gaming Con this last weekend, and it was a fantastic experience. The week before the conference was a bit of a crunch, fixing bugs, getting things ready to show. I felt pretty good about the levels I had on display. I had three that were pretty approachable, and escalated in difficulty, then two more that were nearly impossible. What I thought was really neat is that I had several people come back periodically throughout the day and give those levels another shot, and several people beat both of the last two levels. I had several instances where people had played the game previously and they came back with their friends to show them.
The showing went very well. It seems that two years of experimenting with the movement system has yielded something that people were quickly able to pick up. I got into a rhythm, giving the same instructions every time someone sat down, and it really didn’t need more than five or six sentences to get people going. Once people got going I was impressed by some of the strategies people came up with, the levels were fairly simple, so they didn’t require a lot of creativity, but people still found creative approaches to the problems. The thing that I was most happy about was how much people seemed to enjoy it. I think there was only one person who sat down and played it and didn’t end up liking it. Most everyone thought it was at least interesting, and many thought that it was very interesting, something that they would definitely want to play.
There were two things that were clearly something people wanted: lots of interesting scenarios, and multiplayer. I’m hoping to fill the campaign with lots of interesting levels, surrounded by a story that I think people are really going to like. But I felt like people would want more, so I’m intending to add a level editor, so that people can continue to play and enjoy the game even after they have gone through the campaign. The other thing was multiplayer, which the game really is very well suited for. There would be less waiting for the others to finish their turns since everything runs simultaneously, and it would bring in a lot of interesting decisions as you tried to figure out what your compatriots were up to. This may be a bit naive, but I think the multiplayer should be relatively easy to implement. I haven’t looked at Unity’s multiplayer features yet, but all I really need is a way to have the players meet, and a way to communicate between them. All of the existing infrastructure should be pretty easily expanded to support multiple players.
I tracked some statistics on Thursday and Friday about how many people played each of the levels, what their play time was, and whether they won or lost. I’m going to get a post put up in the next couple of days looking at those statistics. I’ve been pretty busy this week with non-game related life things that got pushed out of the last couple of weeks.
Overall it was a fantastic experience. I handed out around 300 postcards advertising the game, met several new people to network with, and was very encouraged by the response. I think that was the most valuable thing that I took away, just seeing people enjoy the game, and get excited about it, it really made my week. It’s good to know that people are going to enjoy your creation, and it’s incredibly satisfying to see people get excited and enjoy themselves and know that you crafted that experience for them.
A big thank you to everyone that stopped by my display. Every one of you made the show a fantastic experience for me, I hope that I am able to deliver to you a game that will justify your excitement.