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Pax 2012: Day 2

Pax 2012: Day 2
Saturday sort of began as an adrenaline rush after I got to the expo hall. I had left most of the stuff at my booth at the expo hall overnight, which is what most people do. Nobody is going to steal anything from other exhibitors, and plus there’s security roaming around. However, I did have this paranoid fantasy that I would forget something integral to the whole Super Pretendo set up.

When I got to the booth I started setting up everything and then I freaked out when the announcer called over the loud speaker “15 Minutes until the expo hall opens to the public.” I couldn’t find my SNES controller, and I was thinking “God damnit, that SNES to USB controller is actually pretty rad and someone would take it if they realized what it was…” and I frantically searched all around the booth for it. I wasn’t just going crazy for no reason though. See, back in E3 2009 I was demoing the first version of Snapshot at the IndieCade booth and someone actually did try to jack my Xbox360 controller from the booth overnight. Somehow we were able to find it a few booths down (we knew it was mine because it was specifically marked and it was actually pulled out of the computer by the connection at the end of the cord and not the actual USB plug.) Ever since then I’m always paranoid about leaving stuff in expo floor booths overnight.

After about 10 minutes of searching I moved my backpack and out from underneath it came the SNES controller. I calmed myself down and got everything set up and ready to roll for day 2 to start.

Pax 2012: Day 1

Pax 2012: Day 1
I accidentally left my phone in complete silence mode all night. I actually thought it was in “Alarm Only” mode but apparently I hit the button one too many times. I ended up waking up at 7:30 to the sounds of Dave checking our Steam stats for Snapshot. I wanted as much time as possible to set up the booth for Offspring Fling, so we were pretty much out the door in a flash.

Setting Up Offspring Fling!


If any of you remember the Offspring Fling trailer that was brilliantly put together by the wonderful and talented Kert Gartner, you’ll recall that it had a big focus on the whole Super Pretendo thing. My idea for the PAX10 set up of Offspring Fling was to fully embrace that once again. Alec showed up all the way from Winnipeg with the FC Twin, the box, and the cartridge in hand.

After getting my laptop safely tucked away underneath the black curtain that surrounded the table, I set up the “Super Pretendo” on the table with the Offspring Fling cartridge in it. The FC Twin had all of its cables, including the power and the composite cables for video. The TV I was using had a bunch of input options, including composite. I plugged the FC Twin into the side of the TV where the composite input was, so it totally looked like the game could be running off of the actual cartridge.

The next step was to use an SNES controller that was wired up to USB. I borrowed this from my pal Matthew and it was going to be the demo controller for the entire weekend (which means at this point I should probably rub it down with some cleaning solution.) At first I had this elaborate plan to try and cut a hole in the table cloth so that I could run the USB controller through it, and then out on the other side I would be running the actual FC Twin controller, so that it would look like the SNES controller is actually plugged in. I ended up scrapping this plan when I realized how convincing it looked when I simply had the FC twin go behind the table, and the SNES controller come out of the table at the same point.

Pax 2012 - Day 0

Pax 2012 - Day 0
PAX Prime has come and gone once again and I’m feeling absolutely obliterated mentally and physically, and maybe even emotionally. This particular PAX was pretty insane for me because I was actually a part of two different booths for two different games! First, the Indie Mega Booth came back around for another go since its successful run at PAX East 2012, and secondly my solo project Offspring Fling (featuring music by Alec Holowka) was picked up as part of the PAX10! Fortunately Dave Carrigg (the Snapshot programmer) and WiL Whitlark (the Snapshot composer) were going to be at PAX with me so that they could cover the Snapshot booth, and I could be with my baby throwing game in the PAX10.

Snapshot is Released!


The first thing to note is that I really cannot stand flying anymore. I don’t know if it’s the rough flights I’ve experienced in my life, but at this point the thought of flying drives me crazy, and so on Wednesday night before PAX I got little to no sleep because I was so anxious about the trip. The other thing to note is that we actually released Snapshot on the Thursday afternoon that I would be spending on a plane to Seattle, so stress levels were a little on the high side. I guess I should actually talk a little bit about that Snapshot release since a lot of people just went “What da fuek?!” when we released it without much notice.

We’ve been working on Snapshot for a long time, a long ass time one might even say. With PAX coming up for us once again, we couldn’t bear the thought of standing at our booth for the fourth time saying that Snapshot was still “Coming soon, we promise.” We were presented with the opportunity to actually release Snapshot on Steam days before PAX started, and we wanted to go for it.

PAX10 and Steam Summer Sales!

PAX10 and Steam Summer Sales!
Hey! I really should be writing on my site more often than I am, but that's another topic to tackle all together. For now, I am happy to announce that Offspring Fling has been selected for the PAX10 Showcase!

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The game will be on display during PAX Prime along with 9 other super awesome games, and I'll be there showing it off to the world. If I can just brag some more for the moment, I'd also like to note that this is the second time in a row that I've been a part of the PAX10. Last year Snapshot was selected for the showcase!

In other Offspring Fling news, the Steam Summer Sales have officially begun starting yesterday, and that means Offspring Fling is available for an amazingly low price! How low?! Well you'll have to find out for yourself!

It's been exciting times for Offspring Fling all around. Just last week, Offspring Fling was featured as the Daily Deal on Steam, and it was quite the wild ride. I was actually attending EVO during the time that the sale was going on, so it made things especially crazy.

I'm so incredibly happy with how Offspring Fling turned out in the end. It was a project where everything just felt right when I was making it, which doesn't really happen too often when making a game (at least for me.) I'm still aiming to write a little bit more about my thoughts and some of my process about making Offspring Fling, but strangely enough I have a pretty hard time with putting my thoughts about game making into words.

Anyway, Offspring Fling is in the PAX10, and totally on sale on Steam right now so you should totally check it out if you haven't yet. Later!

What I'm up to: September Edition

What I'm up to: September Edition
I just got back from PAX Prime up in Seattle and I'm realizing how little on post on my super fancy blog, so this post is going to be an attempt to fix all of that. I've been up to a lot of various things in the last couple months and I'm going to try to sum them all up in a single blog post, YEAH!

PAX Prime 2011


I just got back from PAX last week and I'm still feeling exhausted in all dimensions. Retro Affect had a booth in the expo hall to show off the latest build of Snapshot, so once again I got to go to a really cool video games conference thing with an exhibitor badge and feel all super cool and important. On top of that, Snapshot was selected for the PAX10 which means we got a second booth to manage.

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We ended up bringing a total of 7 people to PAX in order to help keep up with the insanity of running two booths at the same time for 3 days straight. It was pretty intense but somehow everyone survived, and we got a handful of press mentions about Snapshot during and after the show. A lot of people are really excited about it, which makes me excited (and nervous) about it. Special thanks goes out to the Closure dudes, the PAX enforcers, everyone that played Snapshot, and our very own gold enforcer assistant for the weekend, Andrew. This guy went out of his way to get us headache medicine, eating utensils, and lunch throughout the weekend, so mad props to you dawg.

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Goin' to the PAX10!

Goin' to the PAX10!
Earlier this morning me and my crew at Retro Affect finally got the green light to finally announce to the world that Snapshot is going to be in the PAX10, YEAH!

Check out all the games right here. There are some good ones in there, so I am super excited that Snapshot was able to squeeze into the selection somehow. Snapshot was also featured in the Boston Indie Showcase back at PAX East, so it also being in the PAX10 is some sort of back to back penny arcade super game selection combo, I think.

So now it's back to work on Snapshot to make sure it's looking good for the showcase!