Perth Games Festival (PGF) Postmortem

To start with, thank you guys so much for coming and playing our game! It was amazing to see you all and how much you loved it! To those of you who did the survey, or provided feedback in other ways, it is highly appreciated, we can’t make Heibei better without you. 

If you didn’t make it, don’t worry! You can now download the version of the game we used at the festival, as well as the survey provided to those that wanted to give feedback. This can be found on our downloads page, or by following this link: https://forms.gle/9psvLgzwtKRe7zXA8

Below, the team has provided some post-festival thoughts; summarizing how the individual team-members felt like it went and providing some general thoughts and feelings. 

<>~~~<>~~~<>~~~<>~~~<>~~~<>~~~<>

Morgan (Capt_CheeseCake) - Tech Lead and Producer

Our game was the first to be tested at PGF. We had a few 6-8 y/o's try and play it. During this we discovered that children have a hard time playing as they can't quite understand the main mechanic. Throughout the day we had several tests including a few other devs a couple of which tried to break the game due to no avail much to my relief. We also had a couple twitch streamers give it a try; they even decided to interview one of our devs.

Conclusion - Our game is hard but fun. It is also easily addictive as people keep trying to complete levels.

Adam (pigpuncher5) - Design Lead 

The showcase was fantastic. I arrived around the opening of the event and from the moment I got there our booth was busy with people at our table, playing our game every time I checked in. I never saw our chair empty until we finished. On top of that, I spoke to a wide variety of the other developers and the like scattered around our floor who all mentioned that they'd played our game and enjoyed it which meant a lot as this is the first platformer I've ever designed and not being a platforming fan myself, I worried my level design would be too simple and amateurish for most gamers - it was nice to know that other game developers enjoyed our game as that instilled a lot more confidence in myself and in Heibai. Especially since I see the presentation of Heibai and one of its most essential pieces that works on equal footing to the gameplay as being what makes the game enjoyable and pretty much everybody I spoke to at our booth or otherwise said that they liked how it looked and thought it was mechanically and visually interesting, the two things I care most about in the game. I would say that the day was a massive success.

Tinyan (ntyan) - Art Lead

I was able to stay at our booth for the entire event, and watched people of all ages try out Heibai. Kids had a slightly harder time with the game, but the mechanics of our game were straightforward enough that they were able to clear at least a few of the earlier levels with some guidance. It was really fascinating to see people experiencing the game for the first time, since as one of the developers I had already gotten very familiar with all the mechanics, levels, artwork etc. It was a moment of - "wow, our game isn't as easy as I thought it was, but people are really enjoying the challenge!"

Amazingly, no major bugs popped up throughout the whole day. As the art lead, I was also very glad that many players mentioned they enjoyed the art style, and the visual hints placed in the backgrounds to explain or indicate new mechanics were easily understandable. Throughout the day and in our survey, we received valuable feedback on how we could continue to improve the game. Overall, it was an awesome day and PGF was a wonderful experience.

Luke (LuciferPatronGod) - Marketing and Testing Lead

PGF was a fabulous experience, if an exhausting one. It was amazing to see people playing the game and enjoying it, learning how it all worked, and providing us all a lot of feedback. We were one of the first games to be played by the general public, and was very well received. We also had a lot of positive feedback regarding our booth set up and poster, which was very exciting to hear. I’m very grateful people enjoyed the booth as a whole. I was even able to perform an interview with someone from StreamersPerth, who also played the game and was very much enjoying it.  

It’s clearly a challenging game, which it has been from our alpha build, but it was clear that it was the type of challenging that was fun to push through, instead of just infuriating like our alpha build. We had many different ages testing it and, though younger people had trouble understanding the mechanics, those in their teens seemed to pick it up quite quickly. 

Overall, it was an amazing day for everyone, and I hope we’ll be able to do it again in the future! 

<>~~~<>~~~<>~~~<>~~~<>~~~<>~~~<>

Thank you guys again for coming, it was so amazing to see your faces, and meet new ones. There will be some pictures posted to our twitter of the booth and the day, so go follow our social links to see those. We hope to see you again soon!