So, we went to PAX. PAX Prime. PAX Prime 2012. In Seat­tle. Things hap­pened there. It was awe­some. Sor­ry, this is pret­ty dis­joint­ed because the com­bi­na­tion of near-total lack of sleep and adren­a­line rush amaz­ing-ness of the event has left us con­fuz­zled with joy-induced delir­i­um in the week we’ve been back. Gah! So many hyphens!

Instead of try­ing to write out a suc­cinct report, we’ve elect­ed to post each of the team’s thoughts on here in no par­tic­u­lar order or top­i­cal col­la­tion. We’ll have anoth­er, briefer post soon regard­ing some more media-relat­ed items of inter­est. But until then and with­out fur­ther adieu, here’s my account:

Point of View

In full truth and hon­esty, I went into PAX with less than an opti­mistic atti­tude. We worked our jol­ly rears off in the run-up to Labor Day week­end, but we just did­n’t have enough time. As you may or may not know by now, we do con­tract work and that con­tract work is what has allowed us to boot­strap the devel­op­ment of Delver’s Drop to its cur­rent state.

This sums up our pre-PAX expe­ri­ence pret­ty well: a fran­tic strug­gle to final­ize the demo fueled by cig­a­rettes and Moun­tain Dew and ener­gy drinks.

At the same time, con­tract work requires a huge time com­mit­ment and in the end I was wor­ried that what we were able to put togeth­er in the time avail­able did­n’t do the game jus­tice as a demo.

Don’t get me wrong, we had made huge leaps and bounds into the tech and had final-ish qual­i­ty art. I spent a good deal of time writ­ing up room lay­outs, floor plans, ene­my assign­ments, etc *by hand* in XML to get us a playable demo. It was a stel­lar effort from all involved. And I just was­n’t satisfied.

So we’re on a plane to PAX *bam* we’re at the hotel *bam* it’s Thurs­day mornin’ and we’re set­ting up the booth *bam* OHCRAPOHCRAPOHCRAP it’s Fri­day morn­ing at 9am *BAM* the doors open and.…!

And peo­ple came in. And they want­ed to play our game. They want­ed to ask ques­tions. They want­ed to know about what we were mak­ing and we were ecsta­t­i­cal­ly hap­py to indulge them. The game demo we showed was ear­ly, ear­ly, *ear­ly* alpha in its fea­tures and peo­ple loved it. It had an awe­some char­ac­ter, sweet envi­ron­ment art, ene­mies you could hack at with a sword, and physics-based move­ment. That was enough to spark inter­est and then we got to talk about where we want to take it, and peo­ple were glad to hear it.

Most of the time a line exist­ed of peo­ple wait­ing to try out the demo.

I think between the four of us we lit­er­al­ly talked to near­ly a thou­sand peo­ple — maybe more — which was just a small num­ber of the ones that wan­dered by and watched. We gave out what we thought was a gen­er­ous 3‑day sup­ply of info cards and but­tons by the end of Day #1 and had to rush order rein­force­ments to make it through the week­end. We talked our­selves hoarse, and mer­ri­ly repeat­ed the same descrip­tion over and over. Explain­ing our intend­ed goals helped solid­i­fy what those goals were — at least in my mind.

I can’t say enough good things about our expe­ri­ence resid­ing with­in the Mega­booth perime­ter. Our fel­low indies were extreme­ly help­ful in offer­ing advice in the run-up to PAX and also while we were there. Our fel­low devs were also inter­est­ed in what we were cook­ing up, just as we’ve been inter­est­ed for some time now in what myr­i­ad mad ideas are set forth from their teams and released upon the world. Ben Rud, our PAX Enforcer liai­son, was among the most help­ful and chill peo­ple I’ve had the plea­sure of work­ing with. I hope we have him again next year. Here’s to you, Solu­tion (Ben).

Ok, final thoughts. Seat­tle is a great town, but we already knew that. PAX-goers are an amaz­ing lot, keen to lis­ten and eager to dis­cuss; I think that any­one tru­ly inter­est­ed in hon­ing their craft must val­ue this with high pri­or­i­ty. We test­ed the waters with our game idea and DDrop has passed the pub­lic inter­est test; full steam ahead is the next course of action. Thank you, thank you, thank you to every­one who has shown even the slight­est inter­est in what we are work­ing on.