Getting A Booth At PAX East!
A few months ago I came across the PAX Rising Indie Showcase website for the upcoming PAX East, a gaming convention held each year in Boston (with the exception of last year, it was held online due to COVID). I happened to see the entry form on the day before a build was due to sign up. I figured it might be worth entering because I was working on demo builds at the time anyway so getting something together quickly for the submission wouldn't take more than a day.
This was the first major entry of any kind and considering it was last minute, my expectations weren't very high on getting selected.
A few weeks later I received an email saying that Hostile Mars was selected as one of the winners to attend PAX East and receive a free booth to showcase the game to thousands of people. I was extremely excited to get the news and felt validated that the concept of the game I have been working on for so long and iterating so many times through playtesting at least seemed interesting to a group of people, at least enough to be selected as one of 12 indie teams with a team less than 10 people (mind you my team was 1).
The email said that it could be up to 4 people so I reached out to a handful of people from the game development weekly call I am a part of and quickly had a few people willing to help, from Canada, Ireland, and California, one of which never was able to make it due to a never-ending chain of travel incidents (more on that below).
So a few weeks later I packed up the car with my development computers, monitors, and hardware and drove from Atlanta to Boston, which ended up being about a 22-hour road trip (I was driving up in an electric car so it added some time to stop and charge). When I arrived it was time to unload the equipment at the venue, after which I met up with the people that came to help and then went to bed.
The next day the show started at 9 am, so naturally, I was there at 5 am to make sure the build was solid. From then on it was kind of a blur.
The Show
People were playing the game pretty much the whole time, with a line most of the 4 days.
I modified the game into a version that could be played within 10-15 minutes, meaning I basically stripped out all of the complex systems that would require a tutorial for a player to understand. I did this because when researching how to make a demo for the event, I came across a video that said "Make it like an arcade game. Someone walks up, pops in a quarter, and plays. They shouldn't need a bunch of tutorials to get started."
So that left the combat (most people understand 3rd person shooter controls and mechanics) and waves.
I spawned the player with a pre-built base and triggered waves. I gave them items after each round so they wouldn't need to craft a bunch of things, but left it open in case they wanted to create more turrets or ammo.
Almost everyone said they really enjoyed it.
Multiple publishers came up asking what my plans were and said they would be happy to talk if interested, to which I replied I am not looking for a publisher. A few things the publishers said were "This is the best solo-dev game I have ever seen." "This beats games that have 20 people working on them for 3-4 years." and "This is a publisher's dream". All very promising considering they are looking for games that they think will be profitable and do well.
A lot of players were genuinely interested in the direction of the game, which was great. I got to talk to a lot of factory/base-builder fans to see what they thought about the game and how it played.
The most common feedback was that they love Satisfactory but wished there were something that the base was used for after making it, and thought that Hostile Mars was promising. A few people said it was the best game they saw at PAX East (all games not just indies), which blew my mind.
This was the first time really showing the game in a large format outside of a Reddit post or on Discord, so I am extremely happy with how it went.
For anyone that came and checked out the game at PAX East, thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking with all of the fans of the genre.
Media Coverage From PAX
There were a handful of articles and videos created reviewing the games at PAX East and a few with very favorable mentions about Hostile Mars. I did 4 or 5 interviews like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD2h5k4bn7E
Rock Paper Shotgun did a video blog about the event and while talking about the PAX Rising Showcase games, they only spoke of 2, one of which was Hostile Mars. The RPS writer was at the booth for probably 45 minutes or so waiting to be able to play and talking about the game with me. This was probably the biggest out of all the content released. The unfortunate part is that the video is behind their paid subscription so it didn't really have an impact on traffic to the game like a normal article from them would.
Since the event, a bunch of people joined the Discord to say they played at PAX and enjoyed it or someone told them about it, which is also a great benefit of the show. You can join the Discord here: https://discord.gg/Xd88eF8Teg
A Travel Nightmare
Out of the three helpers coming to join me at the booth, one did not make it. Based out of Ireland the trip was going to be a long one even if everything went right, but to start it off he couldn't make the first flight due to some VISA complications. Luckily he was able to get on the same flight the next day, with a connection in Amsterdam. The following day his flight from Ireland was late and they arrived in Amsterdam after his connecting flight took off, so he missed it. There were no other immediate flights available to Boston, and the quickest one was for him to go BACK to Ireland as a connecting flight, and then to Boston from there.
If you didn't guess yet, his flight was late into Ireland and he missed that flight as well. Being up for more than 36 hours straight in airports waiting in lines, he decided that it just wasn't meant to be. Luckily he was in Ireland so he could just go home (although it wasn't at the airport that was by his house so it was a 4-hour train ride)
I know I am not doing this story justice as there were tons of things that happened in between like extremely long lines and corridors that looked like he would soon be murdered. I'm glad he was able to make it home and rest.
A Successful Event
I'm not exactly sure when the pic was taken, but it doesn't matter because I was both excited and exhausted the whole time and you can see it in my eyes.
Thank you to everyone that came by the booth. It meant a whole lot more to me than it probably seemed. My wife calls me a robot and I'm still trying to compute why that isn't a good thing, but I know it is sometimes hard to read my emotions. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking to everyone about automation games, Hostile Mars, their impressions, and their enthusiasm for my game. I'm excited for what Hostile Mars could come to be.
-Jake