Macguffin Games

Wrap Up for IGC East Demo Night

Demo Night was a great success!

The event took place after the Thursday conference sessions had wrapped up.   I got there early and got set up.  We used my desktop computer to show the intro animatic, and then I did demos of the prototype from my laptop.

We got a great reception.  I saw lots of people stop and stare, and I was demoing the game for between one and five people at a time for the whole evening.  I was careful to explain that this was an early gameplay prototype, and people took it in that light.  Several people had great things to say about Graham’s artwork, and I know for a fact that a number of folks were pulled in just from seeing and hearing the animatic.

Even better than that, though, was the critical feedback I got on the game.  This came in two main parts.  The first part came from my ex-coworker Linda Currie.  She and I worked at Blue Fang Games up until last March – right about the same time I started Macguffin, she went over to Creat Studios and is now their Creative Director.  Back in the day she worked at her family’s company up in Canada – Sirtech Software, the makers of the Wizardry series.  I demoed the game for her earlier in the day, and came away with a good page of really insightful criticisms.

The second chunk came from Carolyn Carnes of Flash Fire Communications.  She introduced herself to me at Demo Night and asked what was so special about this little RPG we were doing.  I explained as best I could, and she admitted she could see some potential.  The next day we discussed my business strategies for the game at some length, and she had a great deal of advice on pitfalls I might run into.

So, overall a great success.  The critical feedback was excellent, the great reception we got at demo night was heartening, and being forced to show the game to so many people really helped me decide exactly what our next steps are with its development.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be using the dev blog to lay out overviews of our design for Heritage, how and when we plan to release it, and to throw out at least a couple pieces of art from the animatic.

We received one write-up that I know of, from slashgamer.com.  That link is to part one of their post.  I expect part two some time soon, and it will potentially contain screenshots and info on Heritage from my being interviewed.  I’ll make sure we link the article.

As a note, I’d like to give a big shout out to Darren Torpey for both driving me and helping get the equipment from his car to the Demo Night room.  Also to Darius Kazemi and Dave Ludwig for additional sherpa duty.  Thanks, guys.

Tags: Dev Blog, heritage