Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Too Many Games: The Results



This past weekend a few of the Dirigiballers took our latest build to “Too Many Games”, which is an awesome convention just outside of Philadelphia. This was a major milestone for our team for many reasons. First, we hired two new developers (Duy Le and Ben Heard) this year and this build represents the first major release of their work alongside the continued efforts of our more senior team members. We saw the release of: (1) Track Switching, (2) Activate-able Bridges, (3) improved Dirigible behaviors and capabilities, (4) polished new menus centered around the improved Battle Menu that provides micromanagement of the players train, and (5) further integration of story and tutorial elements. I could go on about all the improvements, but let’s just say that we set our goals earlier this year and we exceed expectations.

Too Many Games: Pushing builds and playtesting!

The audience at the convention really seemed to enjoy all the new features and they provided ample feedback that we hope to incorporate into our next build shortly. It was a real pleasure to interact with the Philadelphia crowd, you guys really make game development worth it! I wanted to mention a few of the awesome indie developers that we got to speak with. The crew behind “Default Dan” was awesome to network with and their game is excellent. There was also a neat student project by the “The Automatic Gentlemen”, which was a great throwback to the platformer days of old though with an updated modern look and cheeky characters! Finally, a quick shout out to Horizon’s End and Broken Crown Games, LLC. Please check out these titles as well as all the other great Indies that attended the convention.

Too Many Games: A portion of our awesome audience and playtesters!

You might ask, what is next for the Dirigiballers? Well were still looking for support on our recently launched Steam Greenlight Concept page. We have an upcoming jam in two weeks where we will be setting our priorities for the rest of the year. We should also be working on updating our game trailer to show off the new content. We are really hoping to make it back to MAGFest and demo our planned co-op experience for the audience. In the immediate future, we will be bringing an intermediate build to “Indie Con DC”. This is a free and open to all ages event that is hosted by “Gaming in Public” and features many great Indie developers from around the DC area. The event will take place on August 3rd, 2013 at PUBLIC tenley.  Additionally, Indie developers can get in touch with the organizers to get their games into the event. Please come out and support all the organizations that are making this unique event possible!