The biggest gaming dance in North America has come and gone now. Games have been played, friendships been made, and millions of hours of sleep lost. This GenCon was the biggest since 2019 and it definitely felt like it. Indianapolis was overrun with people excited for a long weekend of quality gaming. But you aren’t here to talk about quality games, you’re here to talk about Durdle Games! So, what did your favorite dice based dynamic duo get up to at GenCon, read on to learn more!
The best part of the convention for us was getting to meet all of our Durdlers, or at least a lot of them in person. Wednesday night we hosted our very first Durdle Games gaming night. We were very much winging it as anyone who was with us when we got kicked out of the first conference room can attest too. But if there’s one thing Durdle Games is good at its hijacking hotel furniture without asking permission and running a game night. Actually, we should probably be in that business instead of game making.
“Durdle Games are very OK“- Durdle Fans probably
Having so many people show up to our half-baked event was really fantastic. Between us, we were expecting a few people to show, but in the end we had 15? 20? I lost count but I’m pretty sure one guy just wandered up and started playing. There were some real highlights to the night too. John (TommyElliot) pulled a 6 game winning streak in Constellé, Zack came from way behind to win ChampionChip with the power of his grandma, and the Ottoy family is now better at my card games than I am. A great time was had by many.
On the working front, it was our first time touching the finished product that is Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze. It was very special seeing UMA as a final product. It was even more special to run demos of the game and seeing in person reactions to the game. Up until now we had always played the game (in testing) with very serious Unmatched players but at GenCon we actually had to teach some people how to play their first game of Unmatched. So many of the games came down to the wire and watching players battle their enemies, while not struggling with the system was very rewarding.
The Martian Invader was not gentle on these first time heroes.
Finally, we were working at the convention as well. We spent an evening speed pitching and networking. We had about a half-dozen publisher meetings as well. While these things are fun in their own way, they do require preparation and can be pretty tiring. But in the end it paid off. Afoot and ChampionChip have found their new homes, we’re hopeful at least one of them will be released in 2024. Our trick-taking games are under consideration from multiple publishers as well. Hopefully one of those will be signed in the next few months. Being able to get get audience with any publishers is always a win, and to hear that some of them look forward to playing what comes out of the Durdle lab next is very rewarding. Overall Gencon was a smashing success, we should do this again next year.
Coming to a game store near you!
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