CK Status Report, May

Hey readers!It's been a busy month for Cardboard Keep, but we're finally in a position to knuckle down and spend our time working on our game again for a good long while. What's been happening this month?

New Website

If you're reading this you're already on it! We've finally gone live with our new website and we're very happy with it. It should read well on mobile devices and is much simpler to navigate than the old site, feel free to take a look around!

Gamma.con Attended

Last weekend CK attended Gamma.con, a pop culture expo right here in Canberra, and we were blown away by the attendance numbers and the overwhelmingly positive response we got from people who tried Warden. If you were there and tried our game, thanks! We estimate we had almost 200 people play Warden, and the feedback was extremely useful. We spent all of Monday discussing it and making our next plans based off these experiences.

Our latest work on the art and texturing style in Warden.

Kotaku Mention

One play we got at Gamma.con was gaming journalist Junglist, who gave us a mention on Kotaku, thanks Junglist! You can read his article here: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/05/the-games-of-gamma-con/

Warden is currently in closed pre-alpha with early access planned in the coming months.

Newsletter

Finally, we've started taking subscriptions for a monthly-or-so e-mail newsletter. If you'd like to have our delicious updates fed straight to your inbox, you can sign up here: http://eepurl.com/US01n

That's all for now, until next time! Calum 

CK Status Report, April

Happy Easter readers, Cardboard Keep has been hard at work on our large project, Warden, and dabbling in smaller experiments as well. We are getting really close to publicly announcing Warden, but in the mean time...

Interview

We did preview Warden in an interview with Final Round Gaming! Read more about Warden and our studio in our discussion with them: http://www.finalroundgaming.com/aus-indie-dev/interview-with-cardboard-keep.aspx

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Marketing Materials

CK has taken delivery of our biggest marketing order so far, including brand new business cards and... t-shirts! Keep an eye out for our shiny new logo at conventions and expos, including...

Gamma.con

Cardboard Keep can confirm we'll be attending Gamma.con, a pop culture expo right here in Canberra on the 24th of May. This will likely be the first time Warden is out in the wild for you to play, so if you're in the area come along and say hi! You can find out more about Gamma.con and grab tickets on their website here: http://gammacon.org/

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Pizza and Pixels, Canberra Game Dev Meetup

CK devs attended the first Pizza and Pixels meet up for local game devs on Wednesday. We met lots of great people including 2K Australia devs working on the just announced Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, and saw lots of interesting local projects. If you're a game developer in or near Canberra keep an eye out for the next meet up and come along to network! More info here: http://www.meetup.com/Canberra-Gamedevs/events/175300642/

That's it for this update.  Stay tuned for more news on Warden real soon. Until next time, Calum

Blog: PAX AUS 2013

As many should know Australia broke the metaphorical champagne on it's first Penny Arcade Expo on July 19.

This event is a huge pro for the Australian games industry and we were lucky enough to be able to attend. For those whom are unaware of what PAX is all about let me inform you.

PAX is a convention started by the guys who made the incredibly popular webcomic Penny Arcade. They love video games, tabletop games and everything about games! It's fantastic, PAX is a place full of game developers and just as importantly, gamers! Such a large gathering of gamers offers a unique opportunity for start-ups like ourselves. We spent much of our weekend walking around with tablet in hand, getting gamers and devs alike to test and critique our recently released Android title: Vein Gods.

Boy, did we get some feedback! Bugs, game breaking bugs, tablets not working, devices running out of charge, not enough of us to man the small booth space graciously provided by the AIE Incubator. People struggling to understand the game in the first five seconds of having it thrust in their faces! For anyone in an indie studio who are going to PAX or any other convention: get business cards! 

But it wasn't all dark. We got a lot, in fact a metric gamer ton of feedback. Ideas, ways to fix issues, and advice for selling the game at PAX. Not to mention all the contacts made, I have a stack of business cards on my desk now ranging from the awesome Halfbrick and Voxel Agents guys, to the underground indies like ourselves such as DimeStudios, who also released their first game recently, Tasty Fish.

All that's just from a dev perspective. The expo itself was fantastic, the talks were amazing, some of the best in the industry giving their advice and wisdom upon those of us who are still trying to break even. Talks about the psychology of games and how it is going to change the coming generations and even announcements from Gearbox asking if anyone had a copy of Maya 3 so they could access the source files of the Homeworld IP they recently picked up.

PAX Aus was closed, as PAX always are, with a rare thing. This time around it was a giant game of Jenga, in front of the entire crowd of PAX, commentated by Mike and Jerry of Penny Arcade fame. The lucky Omeganaut who won got an all expenses paid trip to PAX Prime.

Going to PAX was well worth the travel costs, from both a personal and business perspective. So with that, this parting advice for anyone getting into the indie industry: don't skimp on marketing, get posters, shirts, business cards and most importantly go to conventions!

Tim Out.