Hi, I'm Henry. In 2012 I quit my job as a programmer at BioWare to spend a year making my own indie games. This blog is about what happened next...

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Electronic Entertainment

The aforementioned Purple Cube has arrived! (this is the award we won at the A MAZE. festival in Berlin). It is heavy and squishy.

E3

Since I last wrote, the Spaceteam took a trip to another conference: E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.

E3 is all about business, publishers, retailers, press, rather than developers or fans. I didn’t think Spaceteam would fit in there and booths are very expensive so I hadn’t planned on going.

But then we were invited to be part of the IndieCade booth. IndieCade is a festival I had previously submitted my game to (the actual festival is in October… I assume this means I’ve been accepted??)

The Indie Loft

The first thing we had to do was find somewhere to stay. We needed a cheap place in downtown LA and hotels are expensive so we turned to Airbnb. You never know what you’re going to get but we’ve had good experiences before.

I also reached out to other indies who might be going to see if they wanted to split a larger space to save money. Various interests were piqued and I ended up renting a downtown loft with room for 12 people!

The living room of our loft

There were some last-minute complications (not enough beds!) but the host made sure we were taken care of. The price ended up being similar to a hostel ($57/person/night), but it was more convenient, safer, and filled with fellow indies!

It was a great way to make new connections with other people in the community. I’ll definitely share space like this again sometime.

The IndieCade Booth

IndieCade rented a booth space on the expo floor and filled it to the brim with ~40 games and their creators. The rest of E3 can be pretty overwhelming and intimidating, but the IndieCade booth felt comfortable. Everyone there felt like a friend. There was no pretension or sleaze.

Just a lot of interesting games from small passionate teams willing to try making things that don’t involve shooting people in the face.

There were games played with stickers, and with giant blocks.

Meditative humming games.

Digital games without screens.

Adventure games about cancer.

Interactive stop-motion musical comedies.

Cooperative spaceship management games from Canadians (not us!)

There were inflatable glowing orange chairs!

There were “booth bros”! (a welcome change from the “booth babes” that E3 is infamous for). These well-muscled dudes were game pieces in the daily video game trivia quiz.

I’m really looking forward to the main IndieCade festival in October and reconnecting with the new friends we made. From what I saw at E3 it’s going to be a great show!

Spaceteam didn’t get as much traffic as at previous events. There were a lot of games to see, and a lot of press already knows about us (it’s been 6 months now!), but the show was worth it for the people.

Stats

Latest downloads

Total downloads: 469,785

Total sales revenue: $8,001.22

Latest App Store reviews

(accompanying a 1-star review)
Where is everybody?
It’s as if nobody is playing this game in the entire state of Utah. STILL searching for ‘spaceteam signals.’ Is this some stupid error?

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Space-happiness
This game is more fun than bullseying womprats with my T-16 back home. 10/10 would voyage again

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Fun to the power of 43
I have finals tomorrow and I didn’t even study but its okay cuz this game was really fun

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Dinner Ruiningly Fun
Mr. Kitty and I are so enamored with this game – it caused us to burn our meatballs. Thanks Space Team for making us order out.

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Awesome
I COULD HAVE DIED!!

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This Game…….
I cannot describe this game in words. It is absolutely amazing. HOW AMAZING?! Amazing enough to move all the furniture in a room to design a spaceship and flash lights with a space background on a big screen TV. THAT’S how amazing. If you haven’t played this game. You haven’t lived.

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Awe yeah
This game was so good I came outside my butt

In conclusion, here’s a picture of Sara with a sand monster: