Its been a little more than a month since we participated in the Seattle Indies Expo (SIX for short) as exhibitors with Hope: A Sky Full of Ghosts and, now that the dust has settled, I would like to share with you all our learnings, what went well and what didnt go so well. SIX is a one-day in-person celebration of independent games made in the Pacific Northwest. At SIX, indie game developers can showcase their games (no matter if theyre released or a work in progress) to thousands of attendees that also have the opportunity to ask devs questions, play demos and give feedback.

Some stats

The event ran from 12pm to 9pm. During that time we had 39 people playing the game with an average play session of 20 minutes, accrued 23 wishlists, 68 visits to the Steam page and 50+ people stopping by to know more about the game.

What went well

We brought two machines for people to play the demo and it paid off. There wasnt a second where any of the machines were idle. As I mentioned above, the amount of people that played the game and the length of the sessions were astonishing (considering our game is a point & click with lots of narrative and a big expo like this is not particularly the best setting to enjoy it). We also brought a retractable banner (78" x 33") with the name/art of our game and a huge QR code. This gave us enough visibility around the other booths (pretty much everyone had one) and people were able to scan the code easily to get to our Steam page. Lastly, networking! We were able to reconnect with other gamedev friends and meet a lot of cool people. From streamers looking for short & sweet indie games to play to journalists interested in reviewing games from the Pacific Northwest.

What didnt go so well

Since both of the machines were busy with people playing the demo, we didnt have anything else to play the trailer. An extra monitor with another device to put the trailer on loop would have been a great addition. A handful of people completed the demo (~1 hour of gameplay) and we didnt have anything special to reward them. It was really humbling and flattering that, even with a one-day badge for PAX, these people decided to spend so much time with our game and our story. Ultimately, we had some prints about a proof of concept for an in-game propaganda and we gave them away to the last 3 but it would have been awesome if we had this planned from the beginning with something more cool or meaningful. Despite the fact that the banner gave us great visibility and helped us point people towards our Steam page, we didnt do a very good job at promoting our Discord server. We didn't even have the link handy and had to improvise to share it with some folks interested in following the development of the game. We like to keep the player logs when we do play testing for debugging purposes. However, we couldnt automate this process for SIX and we found ourselves spending precious minutes between sessions preserving these files (closing the game, rename log file with the player number, restarting the game). What we learned We confirmed that nothing beats playtesting to understand how people approach your game (even more if they have never heard about it) and expos are king in this regard. During the GeekFest West 2024 we learned that in-person events are terrible for wishlists and SIX 2024 was just the confirmation of that. Even though we had zero expectations for the number of wishlists, Id say that 23 is not too shabby. Another thing we learned is that is very risky to arrive at a big expo like this one with a build that significantly changes the way players interact with the elements within the game (the interaction system, basically) without enough testing. I generated the build the day before at 3PM and was a bit scared the first couple of hours. Luckily, everything worked like a charm and people reacted really well to the new changes. But, what if that wasnt the case? What if the game wouldve exploded and people couldnt pass the tutorial scene? We had a fallback build from a month ago but, still, we were playing with fire. We definitely need to automate the log rotation between player sessions. We could go even further by adding timestamps to the logs (Unity doesnt do it by default) and keep metrics of the time spent on each scene. Thats really useful to understand player behavior and see if our assumptions about the game design are working as expected. Last but not least, keeping your enthusiasm throughout the day is really important. Towards the end of the day, we were exhausted, thirsty and hungry but we kept talking about our game with the same love and passion we did in the morning. This was apparent for the people and made them want to explore the game further.

Final Thoughts

This was just our second event and the experience was incredible. If youre a gamedev and have the opportunity to join an in-person event near you, do it! It will be, without a doubt, an amazing learning experience. I cant thank all the organizers, judges and volunteers from the Seattle Indies community enough for putting together such an incredible event and for giving us the opportunity to participate with Hope: A Sky Full of Ghosts. I'm super proud and grateful to be part of this community! If youre still reading, thank you! Im more than happy to answer any questions or provide more details about our experience in this event. Take care, and fly free!

Aloha Crew, Azrael here with an announcement! Our plan has been to release Hope: A Sky Full of Ghosts episodically. That would give us the opportunity to provide each episode when it's ready while continuing to work on the next part of the story. It sounded logical and a great compromise for an indie team of two people looking to create a game while also having full-time jobs and families. As we closed "Episode 0" this year, we started to encounter questions about how to implement the episodic nature of our vision, but we had more urgent matters to attend to. We needed to get ready for GeekFest West and Seattle Indies eXpo. That meant that Azrael and Wil from earlier in the year decided those questions should be answered by Azrael and Wil from the future in their wiser and more experienced selves. Well, girls, weren't past Azrael and Wil nave? We are not that wise now, and we haven't spent those experience points much better yet, but the time has come, and after the feedback we received at GFW and SIX, we need to face the music. Providing episodic content has two main facets that we needed to address: the player experience and the developing experience.

Player Experience perspective.

We came to the realization that we hated having to wait for a week to watch a new episode of The Mandalorian. And we don't have Star Wars' or Disney's clout to make the conversation of our game be a topical subject "for the masses", nor we have that level of an interested audience to lever. So, at best, the most engaged player wouldn't be happy, and at worst everyone would forget about us while we developed the next bit of story.

Developing Experience perspective.

We thought we had this down. We understood the challenges of episodic content. Wrong! Turns out that developing the framework to bridge one episode onto the next and have Steam handle it and our engine manage saves and creating recaps at the start of each episode is... a lot... a lot of work. We could put the effort in and do the work it takes to make it episodic OR we could just make the game and skip all those extra features that no one really likes. And that won't even be needed once the full game is out. The last nail in the episodic coffin was asking ourselves: Will the story be better served by an episodic approach? The answer was a definite "NO". So, yesterday, on our Sprint Planning meeting we laid 'episodic' to rest, kissed its forehead and let it float away to its very own Viking funeral with the very clear understanding of why no one does this type of content (except a few very famous developers). It's just not worth it. I guess this is just a really long way of coming to the conclusion that 99% of the industry has already come to and we are going to develop the game as a standalone full experience. Fly Free.

We want to share our experience and what we learned after having the wonderful opportunity to attend GeekFestWest 2024 to present the demo for our point-and-click adventure Hope: A Sky Full of Ghosts.

About GeekFestWest 2024

Its a three-day extravaganza of all things geek, from gaming to cosplay and live wrestling to boot! It took place from July 19 to July 21, and with over 6,000 attendees, the event had a smashing first year. It plans to return every year on the third weekend of July.

Before the event

How did you even get to attend a conference like this one? There are plenty of ways to register for a conference, but, in our case, the fantastic team behind Seattle Indies got a booth for up to 8 games to be demoed. They asked for submissions on their discord free of charge. We have been part of that community for years, so it felt magical to be selected. How does this apply to you? Join or create genuine communities. Seattle Indies does so much, but one of my personal favourites is joining other indie developers in what is called the Writers Room. A Discord event that allows you to present your script, text, or anything written to receive feedback, but the best part is that you get to be a beta reader of sorts for others, sharing your impressions and feedback, too. Its about offering honest feedback and helping each other make better games and experiences. If you take anything from this post, it's that you should contribute to a community and help others make better games! Thats the indie way, to me.

Preparing for the event

Shoutout to AidenTheAxolotl for their fantastic Reddit article called Guide to Hosting a Game Booth at Conventions; it was our template. I could try to explain how many things they mentioned were out of our radar, but honestly, Go check it out! Its a well of great tips that will help you prepare for something like this.

During the event

July 19 rolls in, and we are at the venue an hour before opening doors setting up our screen and laptop for others to play in. We met our booth colleagues for the weekend and quickly learned that its important to have extra cords of all sorts! One of our newfound friends needed an HDMI cable, and thanks to the guide we read, we were able to provide one of our extras so they could demo their game as they intended! We had an arcade-like video looping on a screen (I cut it from gameplay) and a laptop for people to play on. I know Reddit likes numbers, so here are ours! I will discuss a couple of them later in this post.

• A total of 36 people sat and played our demo.
• The average play time was 30 minutes.
• 494 visits to our Steam Page.
• 20 wishlists during the event.
• Hundreds of pieces of feedback to sort through
• Over 50 people stopped to speak to us about our game.

After the event

Once the event was over, we realized we were only a third of the way through. The next step is to collate every piece of feedback into different categories to parse them all and prioritize them. Here are a few of the categories we sorted all our notes:

• Player Behavior
• Puzzles Design and Hints
• UI/UX (This is a big one)
• Character Behavior
• Input Support
• Dialogue Flow and Control
• And many more.

But filtering through them is only half the battle. Now that a bunch of them have been prioritized, we are working on the top-tier game/experience breaking issues to make sure the next demo is up to par! Its hard to say what after the event means since we are still going through it and will be there for another few weeks. But girls! I can say that its exciting!

What went well!

Looking back, we had a lot of people interested in our game but best of all, the feedback we received. All the great feedback! Great ideas and many bugs found. Its a fantastic experience to hear how players would fix something that isnt broken and its humbling to see them break something you didnt know was there.

What didnt go so well!

You may have already seen the main one: the Wishlist count. Dont get me wrong; Im thankful and appreciative of each and every person, but although I didnt know what to expect, seeing that number didnt bring me the joy I hoped for. The second thing was our pitch's deliverance. Something you should know about u/satanas82 and me is that we are not salespeople! But we are the only ones making this game, so its up to us to engage with those looking our way to try and give our pitch. Im not here to talk about our game, so Ill spare you the official pitch itself, but what I will share with you girls is that I memorized it and I practiced it, and yet, I didnt give it correctly ONCE! The third thing was testing on different OSs. The first day we had my Windows 10 laptop running the game with the screen playing the 6 min video in loop from our MacBook. For the next day we decided to play the video on my laptop and have players use the bigger screen! After testing right before doors opened, we noticed a visual bug on Mac that made it nearly impossible to complete one of our minigames. We quickly pivoted to our previous setup, and none was the wiser. You can see u/satanas82 trying to fix the issue here.

What did we learn?

This is the juicy part!

Expectation management is key!

Not only for ourselves but for our players. We didnt know what to expect from an event like this, but its clear to me that 20 added Wishlists wasnt enough for me. I need to learn to focus on the fantastic amount and quality of feedback we receive. Small number goes up! is not the only success metric. As for our players' expectations, we need to ensure anyone engaging with our game understands clearly what it is about. Less is More rings true for me. Players dont want to hear about your world, the lore, or what is happening; they care about what they do! Letting them do it right away is key. Heres where the following teaching hit me.

Mutation is the word for Pitch.

As I struggled to be a person who communicates with other people, the pitch slowly mutated in my mind and my delivery. Id forget parts of it or replace them with new ones. However, as I gained confidence, the same three things kept showing up: Genre, action, and characters. So this is the one-liner that evolved from my many failed attempts at saying our actual pitch: Hi! Want to play a point-and-click game where you steal a spaceship, and your crew hates each other? I read it and know theres a lot wrong with it. There is no call to action, no clear aesthetic, and point-and-click is barely a genre; its more of a mechanic. But what I think about the most as I write these words is that your pitch will mutate as you deliver it. Let it tell you what it should be. Our pitch was written to be read under Steams page capsule, and people dont talk like they read or write. So, make sure your pitch is speakable and rely on your promotional material to explain what your pitch leaves out.

Genuine enthusiasm matters

Your enthusiasm matters way more than your pitch (in an in-person event like this one). Often people would see me stumble through my pitch and lean in to learn more about what was on the screen. Not because the pitch was good, I just butchered it, but because they could tell I cared and what had brought them to the table was up their alley enough to want to know more.

Dont waste time

The truth is that it is as awkward for them to stand there as it is for you. They want to play your game; make it the easiest you can for them to know what its about so they can sit and play it. If they ask, share as much as theyll hear but otherwise get them to play as fast as you can.

Take Notes and Shut Up!

Bring a pen, notebook or whatever you feel most comfortable writing on. You will need it and most importantly: STAY SILENT! No one wants to be backseated through a demo, but worse than them not liking your game is you wasting their time and missing the live version of someone engaging with your game for the first time. Its painful to see how things you never thought of are a problem for many people. For example, even though our game is a point-and-click, we actually need controller and keyboard support after all. Identify what you want to learn about; it will impact how you take notes. We didnt know, so we wrote pretty much everything we saw. Things we wrote down include:

• How long they took to at different stages (Tutorial, Main area, and when they left the game)
• Whether they read optional material or not
• When they chuckled or found something funny
• When something seemed frustrating
• The controls they first tried to use
• Anything they shared with us during or after their game
• And so much more.

Just take notes! They will help.

Tasks are real; feedback is meaningless

Im being hyperbolic, but what I mean is that after reading and discussing every piece of feedback we have received, the big ticket items are turned into tasks so we can execute them and improve the next build. We only have a couple of weeks before we showcase the updated demo at SIX Seattle Indies eXpo on Sunday, Sept 1st, 12pm - 9pm @ Motif Hotel and SIX Online on Sunday, Sept 29 on Seattle Indies Twitch Channel.

Final Thoughts

To be honest, the experience was fantastic, and we are excited to do it again, but just under 500 Steam page visits and 20 new Wishlists seem a little underwhelming to me. I really didnt know what to expect, and it got me pumped to continue working on Hope: A Sky Full of Ghosts. At the same time, I wouldve loved to have broken the 100 Wishlist barrier that weekend. That said, the amount of feedback we got is priceless and makes up for it for sure! For us, the cost of going to GeekFestWest was low since we didnt pay for the booth, and we are in the privileged position to get our asses there because its our own backyard, but for further events at a much higher cost, its hard to say what it could be like. The upcoming SIX will be more of an indication of what it could actually be like to attend something big! That has me a little scared but overall excited! We will hopefully bring what we learn from SIX to you in a few weeks. Id be happy to answer any questions you may have about attending an event like this one in the comments below! Take care, and Fly Free!