Dare was good! We spent the first day exhibiting, the second day mostly milling around the excellent show, looking at everyone else’s games. It was impossible not to!
It was fantastic to watch people play both our games. We must have had over 100 people play our games over the course of the weekend so as you can imagine we’ve learned lots. That’s about the best quality assurance you can get really, watching complete strangers play your game.
We got there early and set up, a few quick tests and we were ready to rock (also, ready to turn the music up really loudly!)
Open for BUSINESS! Here’s our stand. We were given lots of compliments about our display of fruits. That was nice. Everyone likes fruits!
People liked the posters we had made, too. Our logo looked great too, so big shout out to the Weston-super-Mare Staples crew. NIce work!
As a crowds started to form, our secret weapon ‘Ritchie’ made an excellent ring master. Every company needs a Ritchie. He’s our man who gets stuff done at ISG, be it PR, QA, security or general hook ups. If we need something sorted, we go to Ritchie.
Roll up roll up! Our ‘get a high score and get in the game’ competition caused a lot of interest too. We made a ropey high score table with bits of card. People loved it and had great fun trying to beat each other’s scores. For a moment it was like being back on the pier at Weston super Mare in 1989 🙂
We also found that Avoid Droid is a great game to watch. People really crowded round the big scree watching the game in progress. Lots of ‘Oooh!’ and ‘OOooof!’ when people pulled off some dicey dodging. This bodes very well for the YouTube replay sharing facility we’re planning on implementing!
People were really fond of Avoid Droid. We found the ladies were generally playing the game very differently from the blokes; much steadier hand and much more graceful movements. It was fascinating to see the scope of different ways people automatically play the game, and this has given us lots of ideas for enhancing the unexpected ‘waltzy’ feel of some areas.
We found that people literally can’t just have one game of Avoid Droid and put it down. They NEED that second play. Then the third to better their second. This is exactly the sort of gameplay experience we’ve been trying to achieve, and it looks like we’re pretty close to nailing it (it looks like we could ease players into the action a teensy bit more slowly)
The surprise of the event was how much everyone ADORED Chill Out Mode!
And here we are in the programme for the event! A good time had by all. Thanks Dare, and thanks Dundee.
Here’s a quick video of the weekend. Sorry about the low-def quality, but you’ll get a feel of what it was like to be there.
As for the other games there, we’re not just saying this but we thought every single one was amazing in it’s own way.
Particular shout outs to Firebrand Games’s ‘Solar Flux HD’ which we thought looked really cool and had amazing audio, and also one of the student Protoplay games where there were three agents escaping a bad guy’s lair – with a fourth player setting off traps using a tablet computer linked to the game.
That agents escaping game was fantastic, totally inventive and our pick of the best game there (apart from ours, of course). If only we could remember the name of that game! If someone knows, please drop us a line! Fingers crossed for a release one day for Wii-U for that.
So yeah! FRUITS! Wooooooooo!
Infinite State Games 
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