Finally a week of calm after 3 big demo events within a 10 day period. As many of you know, expecially those who follow us in our social media groups (@omicronprotocol on FB, Twitter, and Instagram), Brendan and I have been busy running between cons and demo events over the past 2 weekends. It has been tiring spending that much time in the airport (especially when a flight gets delayed for 3.5 hours!) and doing non-stop demos, but like always, it has been very rewarding.
Las Vegas Open:
Las Vegas Open, if you believe it or not, was our first miniature-games focused convention we’ve attended so far. In the past year of doing cons, we’ve been mostly attending cons with a mixed audience, or even focusing on getting board gamers to try a miniatures game. So needless to say, we were a little nervous about how the game would actually be received by hard-core minis players.
The verdict? It was a great success! We were placed in a high traffic area (thanks Jason!) in the demo area, and got a lot of people coming by to ask about the game. There were always a few people jumping in to play a demo, and those who didn’t have time to demo, got a lot of our information and asked a lot of good questions. It was definitely a relief for us that the game was well received, and it makes us look forward to Adepticon in March!
Thanks to Joe Sowada from BackerKit for providing the photo!
BackerKit Playtest Night:
The Tuesday right after we got back from LVO, we attended the BackerKit Playtest Meetup at their HQ in SF. This is our second time visiting them, and we were eager to go since our September Demo there was an absolute blast!
This time there were tons of game designers and quite a few gamers there to playtest all around their office. Joe was super nice and gave us one of the small conference rooms to set up, and funneled quite a few interested people in. We ended up doing a full demo with an amazing couple (Robert and Ashley), and spoke with a few others about the game in depth. Yet another successful demo with BackerKit, I’d say!
Strategicon (OrcCon):
A few days after the BackerKit demo, we flew down to LA for Strategicon (aka OrcCon). It was our first time there, and Mike James, the minis coordinator, was super helpful and friendly, and gave us some pretty “primo” locations to demo for the 2 days we were there. While the crowd was definitely less miniatures focused, we did get a lot of good attention, and a few very good demos. Hopefully we’ll see some of the same people, who came by but didn’t get to demo, again at Kingdom Con in San Diego in April!
Parting Thoughts:
So what did we learn from these 3 back to back events? Well, first of all, the game is definitely improving and people seem to enjoy it. Second of all, we used the demos as playtests and worked out even more kinks in the game. And finally, we loved every moment of meeting new gamers and teaching them our game. It just makes us want to get the game out there on Kickstarter as soon as we can!
So, are you coming to any cons we’ll be going to in the near future? Check out our nifty calendar and come say hi and check the game out!