Category «Festivals»

AdventureX – Combine enthusiast community with fun

From gamescom to local meetups - today there’s no shortage of opportunities to display your game. You can get feedback, watch players react to your latest build, connect with fellow devs, and chase wishlists. But it’s often the smaller events, that have a huge impact as the community surrounding them can make all the difference. And if it applies to anything, it's the AdventureX.

The Tower Bridge in London.
London delivered the expected: Rain. And well-humoured Britains.

Last weekend, Jana was attending the AdventureX in London, a conference dedicated to narrative games - and especially those rooted in classic Point & Click gameplay.
Thanks to a jury, we were selected with Mops & Mobs to showcase our current demo there, as well.

Being part of the 30 exhibited games was a real treat. From organizers to volunteers, everyone was enthusiastic and dedicated to the genre and it's fans to create a well-run space for both devs and fans. Attendees were committed to often play thoroughly and discuss their experience in detail with the devs. Therefore, it makes total sense, the AdventureX requires developers to attend in person: catering to a special interest group made every discourse and examination of the games more focused and thoughtful than the typical questions you might get from the audience at a mainstream expo like gamescom.

A tale with a laptop and lots of stickers and buttons.
My humble desk had nothing but a laptop. A poster would have been smart, but honestly: the swag felt far more important at AdventureX!

AdventureX isn't just an exhibition! You will quickly experience that these are not just any volunteers or attendees, they are a tight community that has grown together over the years. Therefore, the overall event is a big hello! for everyone that's ever been at AdX before, devs that attended previous years and the Discord community that's been meeting online over the year. It’s rare to find something comparable in the wider games scene - perhaps A Maze Festival or developers being present at the Indie Arena Booth. But both grew significantly in size over the last years, while the AdventureX is quite small - they sold about 700 tickets over the weekend - and with that the event was sold out!

As I was solo at the event, staying in my little corner, I did mainly experience watching people play Mops & Mobs, having the most encouraging feedback we've had so far. Though that meant I missed most of the overall event - there were some developers or writers attending, that I would have deeply loved taking to - but hey, without the exhibition we wouldn't have attended our first AdvX either.

So I had an excellent time with my neighbours who are these wonderful people - and show the amazing diversity the overall exhibition offered:

Amy from AdvX, Eike and Ben from Trans Theft Horso - loved the humor, characters and songs - they're still stuck in my head.
Mosu from The Dark Queen of Mortholme - you play as the final boss - love just everything about the premise
Hammered Crow Games with Dark Tides - Victorian era, a weasel as sidekick, dark Rituals and a character that can fit anything into her inventory. Anything.

Now that I’ve experienced it, I’m absolutely in the loop, and I’d definitely return to London next year. With much more time to explore, I presume, as you can't submit the same game twice.
And the talks are even online. And the AdventureX Sale is still running until December, 2nd on Steam.

We packed some monsters for gamescom

Hear ye, hear ye!

Adventurers, Rogues, Dungeon Crawlers and Monster Whisperers - heed this proclamation:
The guild of RAT KING shall be present at the battlegrounds of the gamescom fields. From the depth of the pixel dungeons, they'll bring their monstrous friends that will get all emotional to see you!

Mark your scrolls and seek RAT KING amidst the bustling halls 4.1 at the Saxony Booth A-051g-B-060g!

Jana is armed with mops, monsters and a playable demo on the quest to seek brave allies along the journey as we are looking for a publishing partner to join our monster-filled drama.

RAT KING will have their permanent camp at the Saxony Booth on Friday, 22nd from 9:00 - 2:30 pm to present their freshly baked fully playable demo to all the mingling spectators.

Your eyes will feast upon:

  • the mysteries of our deck-driven dungeon scrubbing
  • our oddball crew of skeletons, gelatinous cubes, froglodytes and rude assistant rats
  • the true power of tidying up the lair

And for everyone of ye: there shall be a warm welcome to our “Bergfest” at the booth on Thursday - with beer and chocolate (Knusperflocken)!

A Maze Open Screens and festival baby

There's one festival that's an absolute no-brainer, a must-go-every-year event for us: the incredibly colourful, inspiring, and inventive A MAZE. Festival in Berlin. With its talks, a huge exhibition, and wonderful attendees, all set in the relaxing atmosphere of Silent Green — a former crematorium right next to a cemetery — it’s weird, but in a very Berlin way.

We were there to enjoy new games, meet friends and colleagues, and show Mops & Mobs around a bit. Like every year, there was a space to showcase games outside the official award competition: the Open Screens. For two hours, Friedrich presented our Dungeon Novel to curious festival-goers.

Our slot at the Open Screens was on Friday from 12pm to 2pm (together with a few other games). While there was almost always someone playing Mops & Mobs, the attendance was pretty low overall, especially compared to the Long Night of Computer Games from the weekend before. Of course the game wasn't to blame for this, there just was a lot of great looking competition to play all around us — and midday maybe isn't the best time for showcasing? We're not disappointed by the outcome, though, as we got valuable feedback once again. Big thanks go to Phillip Gong for organising the Open Screens!

By the way, the only person who actually played the demo till the end (quite a feat, considering there were no chairs) left quite quickly without saying a word… our guess is that they were satisfied.

A Baby At A MAZE. – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

This year also brought a new twist for us: we attended A MAZE. with our child. That alone was a whole new experience. Would it work out? Would it even be possible to enjoy the festival while caring for a baby?

In the end — no, it wasn't the same. I missed just forgetting time and space to submerge myself into the exhibited games and talks. I didn't watch any talk, but played more games than I expected. We took turns with childcare and split up, so we both could enjoy the festival. We even brought her to the exhibition - but that didn't work out for very long.

But after nearly a year with her, if we learned anything, it's this: be patient and let go of expectations. It was exhausting at times, but also fun and meaningful to bring her along. Indie games have always been something personal for us — it would be strange to exclude something so beautiful and personal when work and private life are so intertwined anyway.

So, yes, it works and we didn't regret it. (Okay, maybe the weather. That was annoying. Our plan to chill with her on the meadow in the festival area fell through for most parts.)

Looking forward to how next year will be.


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The Long Night of finding out your core gameplay

(Photo 3 by Friedrich Lüder, Photo 4 by René Meyer)

Right now we are in a crucial phase of development: all core features have been programmed, implemented and can be tested as part of our demo. But as we recently started production phase, it's up to us how often players will talk to characters, fight with cards, decorate the dungeon, or do tasks as part of quests inside the dungeon.

If you would ask us, dialogue is the heart of our game. It's all about meeting quirky monsters and getting to know them better. And the card game? We added that to make everything more (inter)active for players, to provide some kind of "conflict solving". Plus, it's inspired by our own Mondar's Dungeon, which is our most played and best rated free game on itch. So this new addition to Mops & Mobs wasn't well tested, but we liked it enough. Still, we knew it might be at odds with the expectations of players that are into hardcore deck builders like Magic or Hearthstone.

Therefore, we attended the Lange Nacht der Computerspiele (Long Night of video games), a huge event on many floors featuring indie games, board games, card games, tabletop, Pen & Paper, retro games as well as hardware.

We wanted to find out: are five card battles in the demo too much?

Well. Turns out - quite the opposite! Some even asked why they had to light torches or clean the table before they could get back to playing MORE card battles. Now we have to find out if that was genuine excitement? Or just a side-effect of our booth's proximity to the trading card room where they hosted games like Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon?

Come to our Discord if you want to answer that question and play-test the latest demo - not yet on Itch or Steam!

And of course: a big thank you to the wonderful team of the Lange Nacht! It was a wonderful possibility and great fun for us!

➤