SEAR DevBlog, week of 4/13/26: VGM Con!

Post is a little late for last week as I was at VGM Con all weekend and too exhausted to get it written up until now.

In short, the con was a blast.

Perhaps most importantly, I met a bunch of very cool local indie developers I had no idea existed. For the first time in my life I met not one, but two other humans simultaneously that knew who Disco Dan was. Turns out there's a whole local chapter of the IGDA here in the Twin Cities which I plan on becoming much more involved with. This was a whole group of my people I never even realized I was missing.

Also got to see some seriously amazing indie games in development. Unfortunately I somehow forgot to take pictures most of the weekend, so I don't have a lot of plugging to do, but I can tell you Lexilotl is a crossword puzzle run word game being shown off in a beautiful custom arcade cabinet, SnakeMod is an intriguing and fun deck-building twist on the classic Snake game formula, Rob Lander feels like a retro scifi flight simulator in the vein of Pilotwings, Veridian Expanse is a gorgeous pixel-art twin-stick survivor, and Dice Gun Commando is Vampire Survivors with a cool dice mechanic and some sick electric guitar. The best-in-show for me personally, just due to personal genre taste, was Atmocopter, which plays like og Megaman if Megaman could float for a little bit while jumping - just a beautiful, chill, inviting game. My brain decided it was my new game now and really wanted to play it after each hard day at the con wound down... but I can't, because it's not out yet! I know I didn't quite get to every other game in the room and I didn't get to meet one of the guys directly because he had to leave a bit early and I didn't see him Sunday - so my apologies if you're that guy and you happen to read this : )

Showing off SEAR was great too.

It started a bit rough, as on Friday I had an audio snafu which completely screwed up the experience for pretty much everyone who came through that day, and I was unaware of it because I had everyone playing on headphones. That seemed like a great idea on paper to make sure they could get the full audio experience and drown out the rest of the room, but in practice it just guaranteed that I was unaware of the problem until the whole day was nearly over. In short, everyone who played SEAR on Friday heard audio from a sizzle reel playing in the background instead of the audio from the game itself. Massive, massive fail... but at least we figured out what was going on before the whole weekend went by.

Saturday and Sunday were much better. It was great to get some hands-on visuals of people learning to get a handle for Groove - I got a lot of good feedback about how it controlled, and most people who struggled with the drift at first mastered it once I told them they could hit the wall and wouldn't lose it, and reminded them to pull out of the drift in order to extend it. I had a number of people tell me it felt like something really new and different, which was great, and had some really exciting conversations with musicians, other game devs who had tackled the problem of "music racing" in a different way, and players who got really into it. Multiple people over the weekend used the word "love" when describing how they felt about the game, which has to be a good sign. All in all it felt like I saw maybe 8 - 12 people for whom the game really clicked and would've liked to play more. I feel like that's a pretty solid showing, especially for blowing a quarter of the game's playable hours.

The team cranked prior to the con, getting me a ton of great assets to spruce up the website, a new version of the phase 1 level (which didn't quite make it in to the version I brought to the con, but should be in the Itch prototype update I make later this week), and - finally! - the holographic wall effect that appears when you hit the side of the track. Just look at this:

It may not seem all that impressive but it's a night and day difference from not having it. I could tell because no one commented on it. Whereas before people were always saying, "Why can't I drive off the track?" Here's to assets that answer your questions before you can ask them.

Critically, I got a ton of great feedback on the tutorial itself and what it needs in order to better equip people to play the game, which I will be working on incorporating ahead of the next con I plan to apply to in August. So all in all, a great experience. Thanks for your patience on the blog post! This coming weekend's post may also be late as I am leaving Saturday morning to fly out to the west coast, then driving back. Again, I'll be exhausted by the time I'm home. Hopefully I'll be able to get the post up on Friday, before I head out.