Hello Tacticians and Agents! (Now we are welcoming agents for the Blackout Protocol to the community!)
As you know, the team at Ocean Drive has been working hard to develop and deliver the best game possible, but we also worked many days and nights to prepare for PAX West. PAX West was our first major marketing push where we spent some budget, and there were a few reasons why we decided to be there.
- We wanted to meet players offline, and hear feedback on the latest build.
- We wanted to let our presence be known to the industry friends since we are virtually unknown in the gaming space.
- We thought the game announcements would be more impactful if people could actually see and play them.
There were concerns preparing for the show in parallel with game development as we have a fairly small team, but everyone at Ocean Drive made it happen and it was a great show for us!
Everyone rolled up their sleeves for the show, including Jae (CEO), Jin Sang (Creative Director – Lost Eidolons), Dong Soo (Creative Director – Blackout Protocol), and Minkyung (Project Manager – Blackout Protocol) who flew all the way out here from Korea!
Let us share our experience at the show with all of you!
1. Meeting Players and Getting Feedback
We were initially concerned we might not have enough people demoing the game, so we designed a booth with a small number of demo stations. But the PAX West attendees were all awesome! Fans of our genres were finding us and lining up for both the Lost Eidolons and Blackout Protocol demos. At one point the wait time to play was over an hour, during which we got to chat with people and talk about our games. It was a great opportunity for us to engage with fans of the genres.
We ran challenges for both games too! For Lost Eidolons, clearing a designated chapter without losing any units won you a beautiful desk mat featuring Eden and his squad. For Blackout Protocol, joining a 3-person party that got to the boss stage within the time limit won you an awesome mat with an agent aiming a gun at you. And man, were people serious about completing the challenges!
We had a lot of people playing the game and providing feedback, which we logged to review. Both of our Creative Directors personally took feedback directly from the players for future improvements.
In general, we received a lot of compliments on how the games play and look, for which we are super grateful. We also saw lots of people return to try the challenges if they weren't successful the first time, especially for Blackout Protocol. Players came back to get to the boss multiple times (not for the swag, just for fun!) again and again, and that was perhaps the biggest compliment of all.
2. Making Industry Friends
We had a great time talking to game reviewers/editors and content creators. We were grateful that many editors who love RPGs stopped by to invest their valuable time at our booth.
Jin Sang expertly guided them through the demo (on Saturday, he had 8 demo sessions!!), and we have received great coverage from the media so far. We cannot wait for them to try out the final build for the official Lost Eidolons review.
Some articles from the editors who came by:
- TechRaptor - "The 13 Best Games We Saw at PAX West 2022"
- TechRaptor - "Lost Eidolons Completely Stole My Attention at PAX West"
- Hey Poor Player - "Tactical RPGs Get a Dose of Realism in Lost Eidolons"
- RPG Site - "Lost Eidolons is a difficult but deep tactical RPG that will appeal to Fire Emblem fans - hands-on"
3. Key Announcements
We announced two important pieces of news at PAX.
We announced the release date for Lost Eidolons—October 13th, 2022—and finally announced our second title, Blackout Protocol! Thanks to PAX West, we showcased our games on PAX West’s special promotion page on Steam, and got many gamers visiting our Store page and wishlisting!
Most of all, it was really fantastic to have our teams from Korea and US working side by side, talking to gamers interested in playing the games we are making!
PAX West 2022 left us exhausted, but we are proud to have had our own booth to connect with so many players.
As we recover from our exhaustion we are already thinking about possible future shows, in hopes of meeting with even more players in the future.
- The ODS Team