Log #5: Showcase and Feature Creep

I know, I know. It’s been a while since I last gave you all an update.

A lot has happened as of recently, and I’m finally sitting down to share it with you.

We got to show off Slip ‘n Slime at the Sacramento Gamers Expo in… Sacramento California. We had over a hundred people play, and over 15 people finished the entire thirty minute demo. The feedback we got was extremely positive and it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had, I honestly could not have asked for anything better.

We had to leave at 5:45am to get to the event in time to set up, test, and make sure everything was working, so we got to see the beautiful sunrise as we were driving.

We decided to use arcade cabinets to display the games as we thought that they would draw attention (which they did) and would generally be much more enjoyable than sitting down at a computer and looking at a small screen (which it was). So we decided to adorn the arcade cabinets with some art from the game.

Once we got there and the show was rolling, it was exceedingly rare to see our booth empty, as soon as someone would finish the demo, another person would stroll right up and start playing.

I think that the highlight of the event was the kids who would ignore their parents saying “just one more level mom!”. This did happen.. Twice. It truly made me feel validated that what we’re making is a good game, and not just a hobby project that will never see the light of day.

Aside from the amazing Sac Gamer Expo, we’ve been discussing and have decided to cut back the amount of content / art as we feel that we definitely hit feature creep. What we have is very fun to play, and definitely could be turned into a multi-hour puzzle experience, but we have to scale back if we ever want it to finish. We’re a team of just a few people with not much money, and we started this project with the goal to have a very beautiful and nice portfolio piece. So we’re going back to the roots and making sure that we can show off this game, be proud of it, and continue on our journey. We still have a lot left to do: making more levels, polishing the art, getting music and sound design, creating all the store pages, testing… it’s a lot. But we’re excited to keep moving forward!

Thanks for keeping up with us, and happy holidays.