For those who missed it, Prom Week had the honor of being selected for this year’s IndieCadeE3 Showcase, and we couldn’t have been happier with how it went. IndieCade Director Sam Roberts, Akira Thompson of Gamemaker Relations, and a stalwart team of enthusiastic and dedicated volunteers ensured that we had all the amenities necessary to demo Prom Week to a near constant stream of press and players throughout E3’s three days.
We’d like to share with you some of our E3 coverage!
Wired.com includes us in their list of 7 Indie Games that Rocked at E3, which is an honor we accept graciously. The article also describes me (Ben Samuel) as having an infectious laugh, which is nice. By the end of day three, my voice was obnoxiously raspy. It also likens me to Harry Potter, which I don’t need to tell you is another high honor seeing as the world universally agrees that Harry Potter is a very dashing young man.
Videogameinfo.com takes you on a personal tour of over eleven minutes of Prom Week gameplay footage. You can’t really see it, but I’m just off camera, pantomiming advice to the gentleman in the background, who is then trying to interpret it and relay it to the woman playing. They also, within the first minute of playing, find a typo! Rest assured, that restaurant with the unlimited bread sticks will be getting their act together and serving a more traditional dough-based appetizer in the next patch.
Turnstylenews.com includes Prom Week in “a short list of games that “piqued [their] interest”, and goes so far as to say that “innovations in [Prom Week’s] kind of gameplay are sorely needed in industry right now” and that “Systems that allow for intricate social structures and dynamic narrative designs are a balm a field that has become dominated by carbon copy first person shooter play needs.” Another fun fact — the photo at the top of the Indiecade page was taken directly in front of where Prom Week was set up! When you look at that photo, you are seeing exactly what I was looking at all three days. It’s almost as if we were there at E3 talking about Prom Week together!
Gamefront.com Has us in a list of three of their favorite games at IndieCade, which is great! Although I believe the ‘cringe’ in the title of the article is referring to us, so I apologize for any discomfort we may have caused the author. And I also feel compelled to remind readers that getting a date to Prom is but one of many challenges Prom Week offers!
IndieGameMag.com provides a quick look at all 20 games on the IndieCade floor. Although Prom Week only makes up 1/20th of this list, 20/20ths of this list is overflowing with brilliance and innovation, and I highly recommend giving them a try. Although I wasn’t able to play all of them myself, I had exceedingly pleasant conversations with the folks behind Dawn of Cimmeria, Hokra, Languish, The Moonlighters, A Mother’s Inferno, Songlines, A Valley Without Wind, and Who Took the Apple. All of them seemed to be great games (or great games in the making!), and it was a real privilege to have the opportunity to set up shop beside them.
Indiegames.com offers an excellent overview and impressions of Prom Week. It also describes the game as a “crowd favorite”, which is reassuring, as it certainly felt like there was a good amount of people playing the game! It’s nice to get some external validation on that front, as I was a little nervous that my enthusiasm was tricking me into thinking that there were more players than I thought.
Gotgame.com showcases another five minutes of gameplay footage, so you can compare and contrast how different reporters chose to play the game differently!
Also, though not strictly pertaining to E3 but still incredibly cool all the same, Prom Week got a write up in Edge magazine! Lead gameplay designer Mike Treanor does a fantastic job describing Prom Week, Comme il Faut, and other cutting edge games research happening at UCSC’s Center for Games and Playable Media.
Finally, we have Reelseo.com which gives a nod to Prom Week, but, ah, also recognizes me from Battleground and namedrops me! And if lil’ ol’ me getting name dropped wasn’t enough, it is dropped in the same breath as, y’know, *actually* famous people like Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day. So that was neat.
I also had the good fortune to meet up with several good friends, including Alison Haislip of Battleground, G4, (and a plethora of other sources) fame, ComicsOnline.com ace reporter Kroze Kresky, and Tyler Wilde, who is not only an associate editor at PCGamer.com, but also a dear friend from high school that I hadn’t seen since, well, just about my own personal Prom Week.
On behalf of all of Prom Week, I’d like to once again thank Sam Roberts, the entire IndieCade team, and all of the members of the press and public that took the time to play around with Prom Week. The event was an absolute blast, and I think we successfully demonstrated what makes Prom Week cool.
Now, fingers crossed that we make it into IndieCade in October!
