SEAR DevBlog, week of 8/17/26: SEAR wins Best Audio at 2D Con!

And the audio's not even finished yet ; )

Let me get the big news out of the way first – SEAR won Best Sound and Audio Design at 2D Con this weekend!

Every system in the game is geared around the music and we went through a lot of design work to get the sfx audio implementation just right in conjunction with the music, so this recognition, in my view, really speaks to all the effort the entire team has put in to get every piece firing on all cylinders. But I do want to recognize Jesse Jones in particular for the great work he contributed to SEAR earlier this year. The soundscape in SEAR is still unfinished pending more time/budget to put in to it, so to be in such a good place before it’s even done is a very good feeling.

Okay, progress update quick here so I can talk a bit more about the Con. This past week for me was focused on some performance optimization of the TTF (laserfire) reswave and more work on the AI rewrite – specifically developing a cost map for our landscape phase-levels that will provide the NPC AI a baked set of data it can use for making skill-level-based steering decisions instead of taking the performance hit of having to physically scan for EVERYTHING per tick. Cost map is pretty much finished, so next part is implementing the actual analysis and decision-making, then moving on to testing. Can’t wait to get this system wrapped up.

On the boring side, we also finally nailed down implementation of some source control best practices – specifically we established our Dev environment and got everyone moved on to that, guaranteeing a Main workstream that’s always ready to produce a build, and implemented some team-wide workflows for plugin additions that should help keep some of our shared files cleaner. This is pretty basic stuff and was long overdue, so it’s good to finally have it in place.

I ran out of time to work on all that stuff on Thursday, though, because I had to pivot to Con prep. There were devs at 2D Con that were writing whole pvp logic sets the night before, and I didn’t go to that extent (I actually can’t, really, because if I pull an all-nighter these days I end up laid out the next day with a migraine), but I did fix a couple nagging outstanding bugs, make a couple final tweaks to our tutorial, and add a bit of hard-coded reminder popups in-game at some of the pain points we identified at cons in April and July. I’m glad I did, because they helped a lot. Now I just need one that monitors acceleration and reminds some of our less-racing-minded players to keep the gas pressed : )

All right, on to the con! This was a fantastic weekend! We only had one station, but clearly should be bumping up to at least two or three the next time we do this. We got mobbed pretty good on Saturday with a group of friends sitting at the game itself, a row of people standing behind and watching, and another row behind them. We had people coming in to the Indie Island area and saying “Oh, I think that’s the one he was talking about” and pointing at our station. We had people sit down and when I started my elevator pitch so they’d know what they were getting into, they waved me off as if they already knew what the game was about. And a lot of other little things like that that made it clear there was buzz going around about SEAR outside the room. Let me tell you, that was an incredible feeling. Huge thank you to everyone who told their friends about the game and brought people back for repeat visits.

I had the notion beforehand to maybe run a video camera in case we had some good reactions, but I didn’t have a chance to check in on the con guidelines for that sort of thing and I also felt like it might be a little presumptuous, so I didn’t do it. Sure, there have been multiple times that I have burst into giddy laughter while playing the game, when something the whole team has been working on finally clicks and is aligning perfectly and produces the feeling I always knew SEAR could produce – but that’s me. It’s the feeling I want other people to have, but I couldn’t be sure we were there yet.

Well, we’re there.

We had a guy giggling and cackling while playing, he was enjoying it so much. We had a guy repeating “Oh my god, this is sick” over and over while he played through the demo level. We had a boy maybe 12-13 years old who just had the sweetest sparkle in his eye and this happy smile on his face the whole time he was playing. We had a lot of people ask if it was up on Steam and wishlist it on the spot. But my favorite reaction was the one I saw over and over when people saw the first phase transition: a little cock of the head, a slight furrow of the brow. Body language that was plainly saying, “Wait, what just happened, I’ve never seen that before.” That’s exactly what we’ve been going for. I wish I could make a little clip reel of all the people that cricked their neck at that first phase transition.

2D Con is the biggest gaming convention in Minnesota with a heavy emphasis on video gaming in particular, and over the course of the weekend players can vote for their favorite showcased indie game in a number of different categories. With all the buzz we were getting I was hopeful that we might land one of those awards, but I’ve learned not to count my chickens too early in this business, so it was pretty exciting to learn we had landed a nomination and later to pick up the award at the closing ceremony.

I am massively grateful to all the staff at 2D Con for putting on the event, facilitating the voting and awards, and keeping everything running smoothly all weekend.

It is 4 in the morning as I write this – I already went to bed and woke back up knowing that I had to get this post written. So I need to get some sleep. But I will also mention that the big thing I alluded to last week is not QUITE ready to be announced just yet. Should be this week…. But the blog post this week may also be late again because I’ll be traveling for the last half of the week and through the weekend. Don’t worry, it’s coming!