Polymanga & PolyLAN

April 2, 2018April 26, 2018 efarhan Leave a comment

The Easter week-end was a long one. It started on Friday morning at 8:00am at Montreux to get our entrance and setup the booth at Polymanga. For a second time after Japan Impact, we had the chance to exhibit our game on the Nintendo of Switzerland booth. And it was PACKED pretty quickly after the opening, to the point we, the developers, had to stand at about 5 meters from our stand to check it. There were just too much noise and people. But from kids to parents, everybody was enjoying the game.

On Saturday, I took the day to make a tournament at PolyLAN where 19 players competed with outsiders and veterans of the game alike. The level was higher than last year, with some known players getting eliminated during the Quarter Finals. You can check all the matchs in the link below:

On Sunday and Monday, we finished Polymanga. We had the chance to have the developers from Retimed next to our booth and we could discuss and eat together. We meet some players at the booth and overall, the experience was positive. Unfortunately, I got the disease of the year the week after Polymanga.

Orbital Game Jam

March 19, 2018April 26, 2018 efarhan Leave a comment

Between Sat. March 17th to Sun. March 18th, Alexis and I went to the Orbital Game Jam, a small student game jam at the EPFL. Unlike most game jams, it only lasted 24 hours, so we needed to be quick and simple with our game. The themes were:

Et si ?
Plus loin que la nuit et le jour

We took the second one and turned it as travelling and finally train. We went for a second German empire setting with those lovely German soliders with spikes on top of them. We decide for a twist in term of mechanic by not having the player shoot but bounce.

So we did Orbital Express where you play as Agent Herrington and you have to stop Docteur Heinrich Grüter’s train to save London. You have dog steam machinery trying to kill you. Your only weapon is your typical English gentleman stick that you use to bounce the projectile back. You can play it here: https://teamkwakwa.itch.io/orbital-express

Taipei Game Show 2018

February 5, 2018 efarhan Leave a comment

After some months of production hibernation, we showcased Splash Blast Panic at the Ludicious and the Taipei Game Show on the Nintendo Switch. The game is running great and we are in the final phases before release. There are still things to do like localization, age ratings, setup the consoles stores, etc…

The Taipei Game Show was a final opportunity to check if players that do not know anything about the game still like the final version. For that, it was a success:

We were in the corner of the Indie House zone, which was clearly not the best location, even though people were coming and were playing, but there is a clear problem with the repartition of the booths and the neighbor booth was HyperX and there were doing annoying loud noises with their chinese female speakers all day long, probably worse than TeamSpeak at Gamescom. After an event like Pax West, where all the booths are respectable loudness-wise, it makes me wonder if the indie booths should also have really annoying loud sounds too to counter, or that a sound limitation policy should be implemented.

Overall, the Taipei Game Show was a nice event, but I will probably not go back next year, because of the noise and the very consumerist aspect of the festival, oriented for free-to-play and without any interesting goodies, except Sony Playstation t-shirt for $30 (same prizes as in Switzerland).

I also took one week holidays after the conventions and went to visit some nice sites:

It was a nice time, Taipei is a nice city to spend some holidays and change your mind, especially because I did not take holidays in the Christmas holidays to work on Splash Blast Panic.