It’s been a week since BostonFIG, which was a crazy, fun, and great time, and I wanted to sit down and jot down some of my thoughts, since this was my first time doing one of these sorts of events. Hopefully this’ll be interesting, and at least useful for other indie devs!
I had first heard of BostonFIG through Most Dangerous Games, they had Capitalism Craft at the online showcase earlier in the year. (It’s still under development, but it’s a really fun game. CW: Capitalism.) They had an in person event coming up (first time in 5 years!), so I figured I’d apply and submit Iron Village.
The way the event is set up, there’s a “showcase” of games (both digital and physical) selected from the applicants, and afterwards awards are given out for the top games. There were 80 applicants, and unfortunately Iron Village did not end up making the cut. This was very disappointing, but there were two huge consolations:
1. Very detailed feedback from the curators. Getting good feedback on a game in development can be quite difficult, especially when starting out. The two critical parts that stood out the most to me were the relative lack of theming and the lack of recoverability at the start of you get yourself into a bad situation. This feedback is already making its way into the game through the new New Game screens and the Welcome Administrator letter at the start, and some of the progression restructuring has been done to flesh out the world a bit more. The new backstory also hints at why this land is empty, although that doesn’t fully get explained. The lack of recoverability is being worked on – some of it is already in place, just not well communicated to the player, but if your villagers all leave because they’re unhappy, it is pretty difficult to make a comeback.
2. Anyone who didn’t get selected for the showcase was still invited to get a table as an “indie sponsor” for $400 USD, minus application fees already paid. Thankfully I wasn’t the only one to take them up on the offer, so I wasn’t the only non-showcase game there.
So fast forward a little, and early on a cold Sunday morning I pack up my Steam Deck, my MacBook, headphones, a mouse, a sign, and a tablecloth and drive into Boston. I’m definitely nervous – this is the first time I’ve shown off Iron Village in front of a large number of people in person, so of course there’s a nagging feeling of “what if this game is actually kind of shit?”
Turns out I didn’t need to worry, once the doors opened both the deck and the laptop were occupied most of the time. I only managed to sneak out for lunch at 2pm, and that still required me to leave while someone was still playing. The first important finding from the event: it turns out lots of people like Iron Village!
The biggest benefit of presenting Iron Village at BostonFIG (and IMO, the main purpose of shelling out the money and presenting at conventions) is those findings. There’s just no better way to get feedback than to witness a bunch of people playing your game in front of you. I filled more than a page in my notebook with observations, player feedback, and a few bug reports. Here’s a list of some of the main things that stood out:
- Despite testing beforehand, we found two glaring bugs within the first 5 minutes: (1) the tutorial bubbles for trading with a train pop up over the build menu if it’s open, but then go away if you close the build menu; (2) when you go back to the main menu after playing, the trains in the menu spawn smoke particles that don’t actually animate. Thanks to that bug, I had to restart the game every time someone played.
- Different people will find different ways to play, especially in ways you didn’t expect. Sometimes it’s a one off, sometimes there’s a pattern. If it’s a pattern (for example, some players building one of each farm field and then running out of money), it’s worth at least paying attention to.
- This especially shows up on the Steam Deck. Since it’s designed to let people play PC games on a handheld device, there’s a lot of different input methods, including a controller, touch pads, and a touch screen. All of these will get tested at some point, especially by players who haven’t used a steam deck before, so hopefully your game can handle it! (Iron Village mostly passed, although the left touch pad doesn’t seem to do anything in game.)
- Upon seeing the art style, a lot of people will ask, “is this like Stardew Valley”? The episode of No Small Games on Fields of Mistria was talking about this phenomena when describing farm sim games, it turns out it’s not just farm sims!
- Letting your players figure things out for themselves at the start is really useful to test how well your tutorial works, but unless you did it perfectly, it does mean you have to watch them struggle a little.
- In addition to finding out about problems in the game, this sort of playtesting is really helpful for confirming what went well, as well as confirming future priorities. For instance, one problem that came up was that villagers wouldn’t prioritize getting water when they were thirsty, they’d just pick a random job. I was already planning on adding job prioritization, but this confirmed that I should make it a high priority.
- Two players stuck around for long enough to get through level 3, so up to an hour of gameplay!
- In contrast to the constant busyness, the actual wishlist numbers were not substantial. I was probably spoiled by the effects of the Thanksgaming Kotaku article (+400 or so wishlists), but over the last week I’ve received around +20 wishlists. The feedback is way more valuable than the wishlists, but I wanted to share that data as well.
I think that just about covers my experience! Definitely a fun event, and I’ll definitely be there in some form next year!