It wasn’t even a week ago, and I’m not sure I believe it actually happened.

At one point on Thursday night, we had canceled our appearance at PAX East. Seriously. We’d made the call. Jeff was going to go demo in the Xbox pavilion, and I was going to sit alone in our giant booth explaining to everyone who showed up that our team had been unable to get out of Detroit, where they had been diverted following the closure of their actual layover airport.

Two things saved the show: One, or I should say one through six? Richard, Chris, Chris, Aaron, John, and Nick. Plus a half dozen more and equally intrepid volunteers who were willing, but I ultimately didn’t need. These people put on badges, some scrounged swag shirts, and demoed our games like it was no big deal. It was exactly like those rock and roll movies where the lead singer yells out, “Our guitarist broke his hand! Does anyone know the solo?” And the guy in the front row says “No problem,” and climbs on the stage and owns the hell out of it. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Two of our volunteers had more than a thousand hours of time, each, in State of Decay.

The other thing that saved PAXEast was the gang from the Lab. When Jeff told them to give up, go home, we can’t find a flight that would get anyone here in time, these lunatics beloved colleagues started talking about renting a Winnebago and driving to the next valley… I mean Boston. It was just an eleven hour drive through ice and snow for a bunch of people that think Seattle actually has a winter! But they managed to cobble together a redeye flight, a shuttle bus, some kind of detour involving New York City pizza at four in the morning that I don’t fully understand, naps on the airport floor, and camping the gate agent spawn in order to fly standby on multiple flights. The first of them arrived just as the show started, and took their places beside our volunteers. Throughout the day, more and more Lab people made it in, until finally it was all (official) developers sharing our games with our players.

This team, and this community, are collectively the best I’ve ever known. It was a PAX miracle.

And it was totally freaking worth it, because no matter how insane that all was, we were even more insanely excited about getting players hands-on with YOSE and Moonrise. We loved seeing people come through the State of Decay side of the booth and lighting up when they saw for themselves how smooth it was. We loved seeing the reactions to all the things we were putting in for the fans that got us where we are today. We were pumped to see people really getting into the Moonrise combat, and understanding what we were trying to do. This isn’t a full list of the media coverage, but if you weren’t able to attend, I wanted you to see a little of what our visitors and friends had to say:

Game Informer, on YOSE: “If you haven’t yet played the zombie apocalypse simulator, you’re in for some fun.”

Game Informer, on Moonrise: “It made a stellar first impression, and I want to play more.”

iDigitalTimes, on Moonrise: “The upcoming creature collecting game…could very well be one of the year’s biggest sleeper hits.”

MassivelyOverpowered, on Moonrise: “It’s solid, responsive, and designed to cater to many different strategies and team layouts.”

MMORPG, on YOSE: (VIDEO) “The much-anticipated Xbox One edition…with tons of upgrades and bells and whistles added.”

MMORPG, on Moonrise: (VIDEO) “We took the PC beta for a spin and came back with these thoughts on what we’ve played so far.”

Sprites and Dice, on Moonrise: “If you’ve been looking for a game that will make the monster battling genre evolve to the next level? This is going to be it.”

Twinfinite, on YOSE: “With dozens of new weapons, vehicles, and content, State of Decay just got that much more re-playable.”

I know there’s more out there. There are fifty media kits floating around. If you wrote something up, let me know so I can include you.

Oh, one other small thing. We have changed the Moonrise twitter handle. If you are interested in our tactical creature battler, please follow at http://twitter.com/MoonriseGame, not MoonriseMobile – we’re not just for mobile anymore!

Next up… getting ready to launch YOSE. Stay tuned.