Last Wednesday, we got the chance to demo Powargrid at the Dutch Game Garden (DGG) network lunch. The first time we've done something of the sort, so we were very curious how that would work out. Well, we've had a lot of fun there. There were only a few moments where no one was playing Powargrid and most of the time, a lot of people were looking on as well. The demo stand that DGG provided had an extra monitor at the back, so there were people all around us :).
The DGG let us use one of their very professional demo stands. Oh, and we have t-shirts with our logo :).
A lot of people told us they liked Powargrid, and those who played the game seemed to be enjoying themselves. It's hard to describe how cool it is if that's the reaction to a game you've spent almost three years on (and counting). It feels pretty amazing to say the least.
And on top of that we got feedback and tips from people who make a living building games. It varied from making things clearer for the players (for instance by showing firing range when you mouse over a weapon) to intuitive behavior we hadn't counted on (for instance dragging buildings on to the game grid instead of clicking the button) to improving the look and feel of the game (for instance by always having something moving on the screen). So we've now added a ton of stuff to our to do list that should make Powargrid that much better :).
On the business / marketing side of things, we set out to get a feel for what a reasonable retail price could be for Powargrid. This has been called the most difficult question in indie gaming and there is no way to be sure beforehand what the best price for your indie game is. We were certainly not disappointed, since we didn't just get the gut-feeling answers we were looking for, but we also spoke to some people with experience in selling games through Steam. This will help us a lot when we will eventually set the retail price. We also got some more insight in what journalists would like to see on our press page, such as something about a release date, even if it's just that the date is for now unknown.
So all in all, it was very much a fun and useful lunch at the Garden. We'll certainly visit the DGG again!
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